The United Nations ended its humiliating 3 1/2-year peacekeeping mission in the Balkans Wednesday, and a heavily armed NATO force began the difficult job of enforcing the peace.
As the U.N. flags at Sarajevo's fog-shrouded airport were taken down, NATO commanders took control of U.N. military bases throughout Bosnia. In many cases soldiers attached to the U.N. merely changed their distinctive blue U.N. helmets for the fighting green helmets of their own countries.American forces took control of the air base in Tuzla in northeast Bosnia that is to be their headquarters, removing the blue-and-white sign of the failed U.N. mission to replace it with one proclaiming the NATO presence.
In north-central Bosnia, Croat troops fired their guns into the air to celebrate as the British First Royal Regiment of Fusiliers took over two checkpoints - one Croat, one Serb - less than a mile apart, about 20 miles south of the Serb stronghold of Banja Luka.
In Sarajevo, Adm. Leighton Smith, commander of the NATO military mission, assumed command at a signing ceremony.
"Henceforth the command of forces in Bosnia is transferred to Adm. Leighton Smith," said Lt. Gen. Bernard Janvier, commander of the U.N. military contingent in the former Yugoslavia.
He thanked the U.N. peacekeepers for their work and wished the NATO troops better luck in their attempts to enforce the peace following a war that has left at least 200,000 dead and 2 million homeless.
"As soldiers of peace you have made peace possible against all odds," Janvier said, addressing the outgoing peacekeepers. "Their legacy is this new hope for peace that will be put to the test here in Sarajevo more than anywhere else."
Smith took command, hailing the peace agreement as an "opportunity to move from the ravages of war to the benefits of peace."
The U.N. mission confounded and divided the West. Numbering 24,000 at their peak, U.N. peacekeeping troops never achieved anything close to real peace. They were at best able to help deliver humanitarian aid to the besieged and needy, while U.N. refugee workers helped care for more than 1 million people displaced by the war.
At worst, the peacekeepers were harassed, shot at, taken hostage and accused of failing to protect Bosnian civilians.
With 60,000 troops, the NATO mission, Operation Joint Endeavor, is the largest Western military operation in Europe since World War II. It is charged with an unenviable task not unlike that of the U.N. peacekeepers: to sow peace among Bosnia's Serbs, Croats and Muslims.
But NATO will have the heavy arms, authority and clear purpose that the U.N. mission lacked. Its troops will be backed by an array of artillery and, most importantly, they can use it.
The troops also have a promise, contained in the peace treaty signed in Paris last week, that the conflict's three warring sides will lay down arms.
"We offer the chance of something that everybody wants - peace," said Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Walker, commander of the corps coordinating NATO's arrival.
Walker said NATO will be working "with Bosnian people evenhandedly to help create the environment in which the reconstruction of this country can take place."
Bosnia will need vast amounts of international aid and investment, as well as some way of cultivating a new trust among one-time neighbors who have become bitter enemies in months of savage battles.
A small step in that long-term project occurred Tuesday.
After months of patchy electricity, lights and television screens in the Bosnian capital grew a bit brighter. To rejoicing by residents, German Ambassador Johannes Presinger threw the switch on a new power line.
"This is great. Look at those lights - white, yellow, white, yellow," said Jasna Miletovic as she drove her car past Bosnian Serb positions 100 yards away. "This now looks like real peace."
The United Nations will not be leaving Bosnia altogether. Some 2,000 civilian policemen will patrol Serb-held areas around Sarajevo.