Sporting chance for co-operation

SARAJEVO: The Olympic spirit is back in Sarajevo after rival

Bosnian ethnic elites set aside their differences to host the largest sport event in the country since the 1984 Winter Olympics and war of the 1990s.

The Winter European Youth Olympic Festival will open in Sarajevo tomorrow and close a week later in East Sarajevo, a former Serb-run suburb that has become a separate city, in a show of co-operation between the two former foes whose border was a wartime front line.

Achieving that co-operation was not easy. Sarajevo belongs to the Bosniak-Croat Federation and East Sarajevo belongs to the Serb Republic, which are two autonomous regions of Bosnia carved along ethnic lines during the 1992-95 war in which 100000 died.

The two cities missed out on staging the multi-event games in 2017 due to a lack of support from Bosnia’s multiple governments after winning the race to stage it in 2012.

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