Bosnian Serbs hold their own Olympics

PALE (Reuter) - The Bosnian Serbs, excluded from the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, are staging their own competition this week to mark the 10th anniversary of the games in Sarajevo.

The Serb games on Mount Jahorina, an Olympic venue in 1984, are more modest than those in Norway - only Serbs are expected to participate. The International Olympic Committee's President, Juan Antonio Samaranch, did not reply to an invitation from the unrecognised Bosnian Serb Olympic Committee to attend the games, which begin with the lighting of a symbolic flame today.

The Bosnian Serb minister of sport and head of the self-styled republic's Olympic Committee, Ljubomir Zukovic, has rejected suggestions that holding the games near the besieged city is in poor taste and could turn into a public-relations disaster for the Serbs. 'People are dying down there but they are also dying up here,' he said.

In the Bosnian Serb political stronghold of Pale, down the road from Jahorina, visitors might expect to see signs of the mobilisation for war that was announced last month. Instead, there are queues of skiers waiting for buses to take them up the mountain. Reality intrudes in the shape of Bosnian Serb soldiers, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, waiting for the same buses. On the hill, it is low cloud rather than the threat of Nato air strikes that restricts the activities of the competitors.

A number of schoolchildren have been holding their own races and staged an impromptu prizegiving ceremony on the new podium that will be used during the main event. About 100 competitors - from the Bosnian Serb republic, the Serb-held Krajina enclave of Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia itself - will take part in the Serb games.