1 For the first time in seven months, Sarajevans could hop in their cars on Monday and drive outside the Bosnian capital to shop for scarce goods or visit relatives.
2 Hundreds of Sarajevans took advantage of an agreement opening a road to central Bosnia and beyond. But travel further afield was impossible without extensive paperwork.
3 The deal is a provision of a truce brokered by former President Jimmy Carter and signed Dec. 31 by the government and Bosnian Serbs. But it repeatedly has been held up, and officials acknowledged that this accord was tenuous.
4 Nonetheless, U.N. officials were hopeful this time. 'It is a sign of goodwill on both sides,' said Enrique Aguilar, a U.N. official.
5 Two routes -- one permitting people to move between two Serb-held suburbs, the other allowing Sarajevans to cross the airport into two outer government-held suburbs and beyond -- were opened under the agreement.
6 The two routes intersect, so agreement was struck to open the Serb route and the government route out of Sarajevo for alternating two-hour periods.
7 By nightfall, just before closure of the routes until Tuesday, a line of cars a few hundred meters (yards) long remained lined near the airfield waiting to cross. Vehicles piled with potatoes, eggs and other foodstuffs that are either scarce or more expensive in Sarajevo returned from the other direction.
8 'I hope this will last,' said Dzemal Jusufbegovic, 64, saying he would probably cross again Tuesday. 'This would make life in Sarajevo much, much better and cheaper.'
9 Those returning said all shops in Butmir and Hrasnica -- the outlying suburbs on the other side of the airport -- were crowded.
10 Some crossing into Sarajevo came from further afield.
11 'This is probably a sign that better life will come for us,' said Sadeta Zecic, one of 30 people on a bus from Zagreb, Croatia. Buses used to travel regularly between Sarajevo and the Croatian capital until the Serbs closed the route by threats of gunfire in July.
12 Last week the route into Sarajevo opened to humanitarian organizations operating under the umbrella of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
13 Another route out of Sarajevo, to the northwest through the Serb-held suburb of Vogosca, is scheduled to be opened Wednesday.
14 Although those crossing from Sarajevo do not have to pass any Serb checkpoints, the route is well within range of Serb guns.
15 The route across the airport allows residents of besieged Sarajevo access to most parts of government-held Bosnia, and potentially neighboring Croatia and the outside world.
16 The government said Sarajevans could travel to Butmir without special permission. But to go farther, they need to collect many more official papers.
17 One soldier checking documents of the assembled Sarajevans said he didn't expect half of them to return, but most people appeared to be making short trips rather than leaving for good.
18 'I would never leave Sarajevo,' Jusufbegovic said, adding he was content to share the lot of others living in the capital.
19 For Serbs, the five-kilometer (three-mile) route across the airport on the southwest side of Sarajevo shaves more than 50 kilometers (30 miles) off the tortuous route Serb civilians otherwise would have to take all the way around the outside of the city.
20 Most of Bosnia was reported quiet with the exception of the chronically troubled northwest corner.
21 U.N. officials reported about 580 shell detonations in the area of Velika Kladusa, a town at the northwest tip of Bosnia, in the 24-hour period ending Monday morning. But they later reported a noticable drop of military activity in the region.
22 Spokesman Lt. Col. Gary Coward said the United Nations had protested firing of six tank shells by Bosnian Serbs at the government-held town of Bihac, a U.N.-declared 'safe area,' to the south of Velika Kladusa.
23 Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic, fresh from touring the United States, Russia and three other countries, told reporters he wanted the U.N. Security Council to accept his government's demand of a May 1st deadline for Serb acceptance of a long-sidelined peace plan.
24 'A deadline must be set . otherwise the plan will not be acceptable for us,' he said. May 1 is the last day of the truce agreed on by both sides as a preliminary to discussions on the Contact Group peace plan drawn up by the United States, Russia and three other European countries.
25 Bosnia's war broke out in April 1992, when Serbs rebelled against the republic's decision to secede from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia. More than 200,000 people are thought to have been killed or left missing.

Hundreds of Sarajevans took advantage of an agreement opening a road to central Bosnia and beyond . But travel further afield was impossible without extensive paperwork .
without extensive paperwork
What sort of papers were required?