A CAUTIOUS CELEBRATION

"I came home to my dark and cold house and heard gunfire," Mark Bartolini, the public information officer for the International Refugee Committee in Sarajevo, told TIME Daily. "But it was random and prolonged gunfire rather than the deliberate shots you normally hear. That's how I knew that an accord had been reached." Bartolini says that some champagne was uncorked in the besieged city tonight, "but there was no jubilation, no parties. The Sarajevans have been through too much for that." Though Bartolini says thare is more optimism among the international community in Sarajevo, he says that "everybody is still very concerned about the implementation of the agreement. And one thing everyone agrees on is that very few of the more than one million refugees will be able to return to their homes. You're not going to see Muslims returning to areas held by the Serbs or Serbs going back to Bosnian areas. It's simply too dangerous. And there aren't enough troops to police such an effort. Too much blood has been shed in the last three and a half years to forgive and forget." When one bottle of champagne was opened in the Bosna hotel in downtown Sarajevo Tuesday evening, Bartolini says, "The cork hit a chandelier and shattered it. And one of the people there said, 'Let's hope that's the last victim.'"