December 12, 1995
Web posted at: 12:30 p.m. EST (1730 GMT)
BELGRADE, Serbia (CNN) -- Two French air force pilots
held prisoner for more than 100 days left Belgrade for home
on Tuesday after being freed by Bosnian Serbs. Capt.
Frederic Chiffot and Lt. Jose Souvignet, shot down on August
30 during a NATO air raid, left from Batajinca military
airport aboard a French air force plane. Both looked pale and
tired when they were released at a motel on a cliff
overlooking the Drina River in Zvornik, a Bosnian Serb-held
town close to the Serbian border. Souvignet, injured when he
was shot down, limped heavily.
"We were very well treated."
-- Lt. Jose Souvignet
"We were very well treated," Souvignet said. "But it wasn't always easy because my leg troubled me." He said he and Chiffot were kept in adjacent rooms. "We could speak sometimes," he said. A spokeswoman for French President Jacques Chirac said the two were in good health. Witnesses said the airmen looked disoriented when they were handed over to the French chief of staff, Gen. Jean Philippe Drouin.
The Mirage 2000 flown by Chiffot and Souvignet was shot down
over Pale, a Bosnian Serb stronghold southeast of the Bosnian
capital, Sarajevo. A statement from Chirac expressed
"satisfaction with the efforts made by President (Slobodan)
Milosevic" of Serbia, and he noted "gratitude to (Russian)
President Boris Yeltsin for his personal effort all during
this painful ordeal."
France, eager to win the pilots' release before the Bosnian peace agreement is signed in Paris on Thursday, had demanded that the Serbs free them or "suffer the consequences." Officials threatened unspecified diplomatic, military or economic action.
A Bosnian Serb source said some conditions may have been
attached to the men's release; there was no immediate comment
from the French government. There has been speculation that
one of those conditions is permission for Bosnian Serb leader
Radovan Karadzic to attend the signing of the peace accord,
despite his indictment as a war criminal by the U.N. war
crimes tribunal. The independent Yugoslav newspaper Nasa
Borba, citing unidentified sources, said last week the
pilots were held by Bosnian Serb commander General Ratko
Mladic, who reportedly said he would free them only if the
tribunal dropped war crimes charges against him and Karadzic.
Meanwhile, debate raged in Serb-held suburbs of Sarajevo over a provision in the peace accord that reunites the capital. Serbs held a referendum Tuesday in nine districts to ask voters whether they will accept the rule of their enemies. The Serbs' referendum will not change plans to reunite the Bosnian capital under Croat and Muslim control.
Milosevic, who negotiated on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs,
ignored their objections at the peace talks in Dayton last
month.
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