Croatian rail link resumes service

Passengers will able to travel from mid-June

By the BBC's Central Europe reporter Nick Thorpe

A railway line across part of Croatia and Bosnia, closed for nearly a decade as a result of war, is being re-opened on Friday.

The railway line is 400km (250 miles) long and stretches from the Croatian capital, Zagreb, to the coastal city of Split.

It is really of very high importance because we are in the process of rebuilding the country

Bosnian envoy Hasan Muratovic

Although goods traffic can restart immediately, passengers will only be able to travel on the line from mid-June.

The line cuts across two areas badly damaged by the wars in the first half of the 1990s - the Bihac region in north-west Bosnia and the Krajina region in Croatia.

The Bosnian ambassador in Zagreb, Hasan Muratovic, said the re-opening was a significant achievement.

Political pressure

''It is really of very high importance because we are in the process of rebuilding the country and to rebuild the country without railway you can suppose is very difficult,'' he said.

Fighting forced the closure of the line

A mixture of economic logic and political pressure secured the re-opening of the line, which Croatia hopes will help boost tourism on its Adriatic coast.

In the past years, a separate track, skirting round the troubled area, added several hours to the journey.

Pressure is now expected to grow for the re-opening of other, even more strategically important lines closed by the war - from Zagreb to Sarajevo, and from Sarajevo to Belgrade.

These would provide a boost for industries in Bosnia like timber and paper production, which have been hard hit by the extra-cost of road transport, and should help reduce the chronic unemployment in the country.