J

Amela Kurtovic, a four-year-old Bosnian girl wounded by a shell blast, arrived in Britain yesterday for treatment that could save her leg.
With her was Lejla Ahmetstahic, a 13-year-old girl suffering from lymphatic cancer, whose plight was highlighted by the Independent last Saturday. That came with the market massacre in Sarajevo in August after which the Serbs were “hammered”, the UN official said.Lt-Gen Smith could now move to “peace enforcement”. The Nato air strikes that followed not only disabled Bosnian Serb air defences but crippled their command and control, destroying their advantage and swinging events in favour of the Croats and Muslims The Bosnian Serb forces broke. The Serbs grabbed UN peace-keepers as hostages, in reprisal.After the Bosnian Serbs overran the Muslim enclaves in Srebrenica and Zepa in July, Lt-Gen Smith got all the peacekeepers out of danger and prepared for the Serb “provocation”.

In May, Nato launched small-scale air attacks on Bosnian Serb targets. so force can be used to attain the mission’s goals”, the official said.The UN special envoy, Yasushi Akashi, and the UN Commander in all former Yugoslavia, Gen Bernard Janvier, opposed some of his recommendations. “He put the choice starkly: either withdraw peace-keepers or change the UN mandate … It was an approach that worked.Lt-Gen Smith’s clarity of vision probably owed much to his role in developing the British Army’s intellectual approach to operations. He was instrumental in setting up the Higher Command and Staff Course, to teach potential generals how to fight big battles, an area where the British trailed behind the Americans and Russians.When he arrived in Bosnia last January, Lt-Gen Smith realised that the UN’s position, with lightly armed or unarmed forces scattered widely, was inconsistent with any attempt to be more robust. Peace had come to Bosnia, and it owed a lot more to Lt-Gen Smith than he would admit. Lt-Gen Smith’s philosophy in the Gulf and Bosnian wars mirrored that of Clausewitz: “the maximum use of violence is in no way incompatible with the simultaneous use of the intellect.” Unlike his predecessor in Bosnia, Sir Michael Rose, Lt-Gen Smith never went to university.

He went from Sandhurst into the Parachute Regiment, known for its philosophy of violence and aggression, combined with cunning. But he approached his subject with rare “clarity of vision”, one UN official told Reuter on Tuesday
His account of the way his division attacked in the Gulf war was terrifying in its focus “I was manning equipment, not equipping men. Men were a liability – casualties waiting to happen.” He used a First World War analogy: the enemy forces were to be broken up, becoming “easily digestible” for his armoured brigades.Unlike Gen Rose, he never courted the media openly. In the Gulf and Bosnia he avoided going “on the record”, but instead cultivated an understanding with the media, trusting them with knowledge equivalent to that of his junior officers.

Lieutenant General Rupert Smith, the British general who has commanded the UN in Bosnia for the past year, yesterday left Sarajevo, his mission accomplished with distinction. From commanding 20,000 UN troops in Bosnia, he moves on to command 17,000 British troops in Northern Ireland. “We have a clear mission, which is to bring to an end three years of wretched war to an end,” General Jackson said.He must hope the warring parties do not misinterpret the name of their mission: “rat” in Serbo-Croat means “war”.. “I very much hope there’ll be no reason or need to use force at all.”The Light Dragoons were due to spend last night in Krupa patrolling the road, which winds through a steep gorge beside the River Vrbas, and making their presence felt before pushing further north.”Operation Resolute Rat” – as it is known here because the 4th Armoured Brigade claims descent from the Desert Rats – went even better than hoped, but the British know there are 364 days of potential problems ahead. The British – unlike their lightly armed UN predecessors – are taking no chances: three 105mm light howitzers were flown by helicopter to a position close to the front line, just in case.Major-General Michael Jackson, commander of the British Nato sector (which will include Canadian and Pakistani troops), visited the new sites and praised the operation “Everything is going extremely well,” he said. The RUC reinforced its drug squad, but there was widespread public concern about the possibility of a flood of drugs, including cocaine or heroin.The shootings of the four dealers have sent a message both to local dealers and to those who might be tempted to come in from outside.

It has witnessed the Swiss Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron triumph at the Tate with their plans to transform Bankside Power Station on the Thames opposite St Paul’s into a powerhouse of modern art. Perhaps even more important, it is the year that Adam Caruso and Peter St John won the competition to design the new Walsall art gallery.Caruso St John design beautiful, yet austere buildings; concerned with the fundamentals of architecture rather than in applied decoration and gratuitous dips into the Pandora’s box of history. The fact that such a refined, youthful and robust Modern building should emerge in the physical heart of England is symbolic of the turn of the architectural tide, away from whimsy and towards essential beauty.Zaha Hadid’s challenging design for the Cardiff Bay Opera house was very nearly spiked by a mean-minded conspiracy of local businessmen and volatile politicians. Mira Vucic waved from her balcony as the troops rolled in, then ran downstairs to chat “I think everything is going to be all right,” she said “We’ve had enough of war. I hope our children will be able to play and grow up in freedom.” A neighbour, Srdjan Vidovic, inquired whether the British were allowed to drink; receiving an enthusiastic reply, he returned with a plastic bottle filled with grape brandy and handed it around. “It should be peace, at last,” he said.His optimism – or desperate desire – was echoed by Serb soldiers at “Black Dog”, who will share control of the check-point with the 1st Battalion, the Royal Fusiliers.