MOSTAR SYMBOL OF PEACEKEEPING FAILURE : 30,000 PEACEKEEPERS.

Byline: Chris Hedges The New York Times

The local Croatian authorities insist that the two huge pits being dug along the old confrontation line in the center of Mostar will hold the foundations of a theater and a Catholic cathedral. To their Muslim enemies on the other side of town, they look like the beginnings of fortified bunkers and an attempt by the Croats to seize territory in the desolate no man's land that separates east and west Mostar.

The international peacekeepers here say they suspect the Croats are building forts, but they show no inclination to do anything about it.

It used to be that such questions, typical of the dizzying contretemps between ethnic Croats and Muslims in Mostar, preoccupied and concerned the outside world, which invested tens of millions of dollars to unify this divided city of 70,000 people.

But no more. Exhausted and frustrated by the repeated refusal of Serbs, Croats and Muslims to honor the December 1995 peace agreement, the international organizations have begun a silent retreat from Bosnia.

An international peacekeeping force, 30,000 strong, remains in Bosnia, but its commanders insist that the force will leave as planned in the spring of next year.

The European Union, which donated more than $150 million in reconstruction aid, withdrew in disgust in December. The United States, which brokered a federation of Muslims and Croats in Bosnia, has yet to get it to function.

And the Spanish peacekeeping force stationed here, which lost 17 soldiers in the Bosnian war, recently received orders from Madrid to avoid violence, senior NATO officials say. Those commanders say Spanish patrols, which have been fired on twice this month, have begun turning away when confronted by groups of armed Croats.

Mostar, a city split down the middle between ethnic Croats and Muslims, always has been one of the country's most visible and dangerous fault lines. But its current crisis, rather than an anomaly, exposes what by general agreement is the failure of the international effort in Bosnia.

The World Bank spent only a third of the $1.8 billion it raised for Bosnia because of repeated failures to institute economic reforms or honor the terms of the peace agreement. And the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was only able to raise a third of the money it solicited for this fiscal year because of what refugee agency officials described as ``donor fatigue.''

``We have been abandoned,'' said Ivan Prskalo, the Croatian mayor of west Mostar. ``The European Union rebuilt the infrastructure but didn't give us the money to maintain it. International aid virtually has ceased. Things are beginning to fall apart. We are in crisis. The world needs to come back and finish the job.''

But the days when the international community saw this as their job are over. International officials say that at best, Bosnia will limp along with a tense partition, as in Cyprus, and at worst will plunge again into war.

Divided city

Mostar saw savage fighting in 1994, when Muslims and Croats battled house to house, leaving some 2,000 dead and the city's center a desolate, gutted wreck. Muslims are now bottled up on the eastern bank of the Neretva River, which divides the city; the Croats control the west and access to Croatia and the coast. Nervous Croatian and Muslim troops eye each other along the opposite banks, often just a few hundred yards apart.

The Croatian construction activity along the dividing line speaks volumes about the attitude of confrontation that prevails here. The Croats have filled in the windows in the old high school and several other roofless hulks with cement blocks. But the builders have left narrow gun slits in each bricked-up frame.

Nightly violence

Abandoned Muslim homes in the no-man's land west of the river, although already heavily damaged, are flattened in nightly explosions. And in defiance of the outside world, the Croats in west Mostar have renewed a campaign to evict the dwindling and elderly population of some 3,000 Muslims from their sector.

In late November, Croatian police seized the municipal building, renovated with half a million dollars of European Union money, and have locked out the Muslims who under the federation agreement should share offices with them. West Mostar officials refuse to speak or meet with their Muslim counterparts.

On Feb. 10, Croatian police officers opened fire on a peaceful crowd of Muslims who walked into west Mostar to visit a cemetery during the Muslim holiday of Eid al Fitr. Spanish troops, stationed at the crossroads where the shooting took place, withdrew moments before the firing began and ignored pleas by unarmed U.N. police observers who witnessed the attack to return to restore order, according to an internal International Police Task Force report.

Shooting continues

The U.N. police monitors have released a series of color photographs showing Croatian police officials, including west Mostar's deputy police chief, Ivan Hrkac, firing pistols at the fleeing Muslims. But they have been unable to get the Croats to remove the police officers, who killed one man and left more than 20 wounded.

``We interviewed the police officers who fired on the crowd,'' said the international police commissioner, Robert Wasserman, ``and every single one of them lied to us. They told us they were not armed, even though we have photos of them firing on the retreating crowd.''

The Bosnian Croat leadership, who defend the police action, say the Muslims were carrying knives and were preparing to ``attack Croatian children.''

NATO officials say the orders they get from Washington and most European capitals is to maintain the current cease-fire and stay out of disputes that could draw peacekeeping soldiers into a local conflict. This greatly emboldened the defiance of militants on all sides.

``The situation has become ludicrous,'' said a senior Western official in Mostar. ``We are handing out pictures of Croat police shooting women in the back and nothing is done. It illustrates how weak and futile our presence has become. It exposes where not only Mostar but Bosnia and Herzegovina is headed.''

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Map

Map: Mostar

The New York Times