Serbs and Croats co-operate to save thoroughbred horses

The Balkans:Belgrade and Zagreb have vowed to peacefully resolve the fate of a herd of prize Lipizzaner horses that have languished in Serbia since escaping a 1991 bombardment of a Croatian village that killed many of their stable-mates.

Croats were appalled by recent pictures that showed the Lipizzaners looking emaciated and diseased on a farm outside the Serbian city of Novi Sad, to which they were transferred during Croatia's fierce fight from independence from Yugoslavia.

Amid Croat anger at the thoroughbreds' plight and demands that they be repatriated, Serbia's agriculture minister visited the horses to check on their condition, and the Serb who has looked after them since 1998 offered to let them go - for a price.

"They often come to our property looking for food and eating like they have not eaten for a long time," local media quoted residents of nearby farms as saying, of the 26 Lipizzaners that survive from the 88 that escaped the shelling of their stables.

"We have been seeing for years these horses, who are obviously hurt, extremely thin. You can see their bones," said one neighbour of the farm.

The horses' stables in the town of Lipik became the heart of a battlefield when Slobodan Milosevic unleashed Yugoslav forces to stop Croatia seceding from the federation, and encouraged Serbs in Croatia to launch armed opposition to rule from Zagreb

It is thought that about 20 of the agile, white Lipizzaners, which are the pride of Vienna's famed Spanish Riding School, died when Serb artillery tore through their stables and in the ground attack that followed.

At least 13 of the horses were found in a mass grave outside Lipik, where they were dumped after being shot or stabbed to death.

The surviving 88 horses embarked on a search for a new home, through a Yugoslavia embroiled in vicious conflict, in the company of one of their handlers, Mihajlo Komasovic.

He says the horses were first taken to Bosnia, but a lack of food and approaching war saw them transferred to an army base on the Serb-Croat border, and finally to the farm near Novi Sad in 1998.

"When I see them now, I think bringing them here was my biggest mistake," said Mr Komasovic.

A Serbian news agency quoted the owner of the Novi Sad farm, Todor Bukinac, as saying he would release the remaining 26 horses in return for €1,000 compensation per horse for each year that he has looked after them.

When film of the Lipizzaners was shown on Serb television, Zagreb urged Belgrade to take immediate action.

Serb agriculture minister Slobodan Milosavljevic took 20 tonnes of food to the Lipizzaners last week, and said they "seemed to be in a decent state".

"We have to determine how they came here, how they were kept, what their present condition is and what should be done to solve the problem," he said.

"We shall try and resolve the problem of Lipizzaners together with the Croatian government."