U.S. BEGINS 2,500-HOME REPAIR JOB IN BOSNIA.

Byline: Associated Press 

With heavy armor and NATO sharpshooters standing guard, U.S. officials Saturday kicked off a much-trumpeted $25 million project to help rebuild Bosnia.

John Menzies, U.S. ambassador to Bosnia, declared the country had reached a turning point after nearly four years of war.

``We are now entering a transition from relief to reconstruction,'' Menzies told local officials and aid workers in inaugurating the effort to restore 2,500 war-damaged homes with roofs and utilities by October.

But George Mitchell, the former U.S. senator now heading a private group monitoring developments in Bosnia, said continued freedom of indicted war criminals remains the greatest obstacle to peace.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic, his military commander, are the most senior figures sought by the U.N. war crimes tribunal, but both remain at large - and influential - in Bosnia.

Mitchell, in Sarajevo, also urged Muslims and Bosnian Croats to rid their ranks of war criminals, saying they were a threat to the fragile Muslim-Croat federation in Bosnia.

But spirits were high in Donja Dobosnica, a predominantly Muslim village about 15 miles west of Tuzla, the headquarters of U.S. forces in Bosnia.

Residents welcomed the American reconstruction effort, even though it is only a drop in the bucket.

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Photo: A sharpshooter covers Saturday's departure of U.S. a mbassador to Bosnia John Menzies from Donja Dobosnica after Menzies helped launch a $25 million project to rebuild homes.

Associated Press