The 120-page Dayton peace accord guarantees the right of all refugees to return to their homes. It pledges free national elections within nine months and commits the international community to economic rebuilding. Most of the language is ambiguous, calling for compensation of refugees who can't be returned to their homes, for instance, but failing to say compensation by whom. Balconies of Soviet-issue apartment buildings sit full of firewood, the only source of heat in town. Smoke from a thousand stoves swathes the morning sky with a dense haze that mingles with pollution from nearby chemical plants.
Many buildings sit empty and sandbagged, still too damaged by three years of war to be inhabitable.
Its center is sinking after years of salt mining hauled deposits from under buildings. The combat in Tuzla reached its height last May when 72 children were killed and 150 people were wounded in one grenade attack in the center of the city. Yet even amid the fighting, Mr. Jambrovic's church has made a breakthrough in the city. Prior to the war, no written record existed of a Protestant church in the Tuzla region, which is dominated by Franciscans and Muslims. Now Mr. Jambrovic's Evangelical Church in Tuzla fills line No. 1 in a municipal registry of churches.