By the start of the new millennium, the economy will have grown by some 250 percent since the end of the war, but the amount of economic production will still be less than half of prewar levels. The economy is expected to have one of the highest growth rates in Europe in the year 2000, at a likely rate of 11 to 12 percent. Roads and bridges are now generally working again, and that people and freight can move around the country without any special inconvenience. The railway system is rolling again. Power stations are back at full production.
More people have telephones and running water than before the war.
Sarajevo, which suffered many months of cold and darkness during the siege, is now a city of light and warmth. I take strenuous issue with those who portray the last four hopeful years as a disaster. Western troops will have to stay in Bosnia as well as Kosovo at least until Serbia s President Milosevic is removed from power, according to Gen. Wesley Clark, who is stepping down as NATO s military chief. Speaking before the U.S. House of Representatives influential Armed Services Committee, Clark said people elsewhere in the Balkans cannot feel safe while Milosevic who helped spark four wars in the last decade remains Serbia s leader. Milosevic has already been indicted for war crimes, but like Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, who have been accused of overseeing the genocide in Bosnia he has yet to be arrested.