SARAJEVO (Reuters) – I never believed war was possible in Sarajevo, until I watched it unfold from my window.

For me, it began on Sunday, April 5, 1992, when I was woken by gunshots.

Masked men were in my street ordering my neighbors back into their homes with raised weapons and firing randomly into the air.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – The shooting began over the course of weeks, but if Bosnia’s war needs a beginning to mark, then it’s April 6, 1992, twenty years ago this Friday.

That’s the day the West recognized the Yugoslav republic as independent and Serb gunmen fired on peace demonstrators in Sarajevo, the opening salvo of a siege on the capital that would last for 43 months.

MOSTAR, Bosnia (Reuters) – Like Bosnia, Zoran Laketa has a complicated past.

An ethnic Serb, he fought for the Catholic Croats in Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, against his brother in the Muslim-dominated Bosnian army, and against the Orthodox Serb forces that drafted their father.

SARAJEVO, March 14 (Reuters) – Bosnia will ask the
International Monetary Fund for a new loan deal, the country’s
Fiscal Council decided on Wednesday, after it met the IMF’s key
demand by agreeing on a three-year budget framework.

“We decided to … start negotiations for a new arrangement
with the IMF,” Prime Minister Vjekoslav Bevanda, who chairs the
Fiscal Council, the country’s top decision-making body, told a
news conference.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia’s new central government aims to meet all conditions set by the European Union over the next month and apply for membership of the bloc by the end of June, the Balkan country’s new prime minister told Reuters on Tuesday.

The move comes after Muslim, Serb and Croat leaders put an end to the political deadlock that stalled reforms needed for progress towards EU membership and left the economy floundering following an inconclusive election in October 2010.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Angelina Jolie, whose directorial debut on the Bosnian war screened in Sarajevo on Tuesday night, said she would not attend a premiere in Belgrade but denied she was biased against Serbs.

While thousands in Sarajevo, a mostly Bosnian Muslim city, were braving deep snow and freezing temperatures to attend the gala screening of “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” distributors in the Serb region of Bosnia have decided not to show it.

SARAJEVO, Feb 7 (Reuters) – Top Bosnian power utility
EPBiH cut power exports on Tuesday as cold and heavy
snow sent local demand soaring and strained coal reserves.

A cold spell has hit the Balkans in the past two weeks and
has lifted power consumption to record highs across the region,
forcing its utilities to boost imports to meet soaring demand.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – Bosnia passed laws on Friday seen as crucial to reviving its European Union accession bid, with Serb, Croat and Muslim leaders agreeing to the first census since 1991 and to a single state-level body to coordinate EU aid programs.

Muslims, Bosnia’s largest ethnic group, feared a census that questioned peoples’ ethnicity would cement the effects of wartime ethnic cleansing when half of Bosnia’s 4.4 million citizens were killed, driven out or fled.

SARAJEVO, Dec 29 (Reuters) – Bosnia’s top utility
Elektroprivreda BH (EPBiH) expects to swing to a profit of 6.5
million Bosnian marka ($4.3 million) in 2011 after year-ago loss
and do better next year despite forecasts for lower output, its
general manager said on Thursday.

A 13 percent rise in prices to 56 euros per MWh for the
utility’s surplus power from a year earlier helped boost
profits, Elvedin Grabovica said.

SARAJEVO (Reuters) – The United States on Tuesday extradited to Bosnia a Bosnian female ex-soldier suspected of murdering six Croatians in 1993 during a war that ripped the region apart, the prosecutor’s office in Sarajevo said.

Rasema Handanovic, a 39-year-old Muslim, was detained upon her arrival in Bosnia.