MT. JAHORINA, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -In the 1980s, this mountain resort hosted some of the world's finest athletes at the Sarajevo Olympics. In the 1990s, notorious war commanders and their troops took shelter here, turning a symbol of harmony into one of ethnic hatred.

Today, Jahorina's ski slopes are slowly becoming trails to reconciliation as skiers from all countries of the former Yugoslavia come here to ski, and put the past behind.

At bars and cafes, Bosnians, Croatians, Serbians, Slovenes, Macedonians, for years locked in a complex web of ethnic rivalries, now sit next to one the other and sip tea or traditional Bosnian plum brandy called Sljivovica.

Many seem to have forgotten their differences.

"It is interesting to hear Serbians speak in their dialect after years and years," said Mladen Zonjic, 37, of Zagreb, Croatia. "Definitely it is surreal to see us all sitting next to on another and even order drinks for each other after the war that we fought."

Jahorina, 1,913 meters (6,276 feet) high, is found directly to the southeast of Sarajevo, bordering another mountain used during the 1984 Winter Games, Mt. Bjelasnica. It offers 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) of trails for alpine skiing.

The peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war left the country divided into a Bosnian Serb mini-state and a Muslim Croat federation. While Bjelasnica and Sarajevo were left in the federation, Bosnian Serbs got jurisdiction over Mt. Jahorina and the facilities here.

Neven Lazaravic, owner of a a ski rental shop on Jahorina, welcomed the new spirit of harmony.

"War is over, we all have to move on and try to look more like any other European country," said Lazaravic. "Without Croats, Muslims or Slovenes Jahorina is nothing, just a beautiful empty mountain."

Every year, more and more winter sports fans have been coming to Bosnia to explore its untouched nature.

"It is all so natural here, one can ski anywhere on the mountain, not just on the slopes like elsewhere in Europe we've been. I'm so glad we came here," said Janja Libnik, a 25 year-old from Slovenia.

"When the war ended I thought I would never again come to Jahorina and ski here," said Dzenan Hadzic, a 43 year-old Bosnian Muslim, sipping tea in a bar by the slopes. "I was afraid that someone might attack me because I am Muslim and to be honest I did not want to come here and spend my money in Serb territory."

"I still remember when I came for the first time in 1996 skiing season, I was masked with a turtle neck and goggles so nobody could recognize me. But things changed and now I feel just as much at home here as I do in Sarajevo," Hadzic said.

Like Hadzic, hundreds of other Sarajevans visit the mountain every weekend to ski. But not all share the feeling of reconciliation. Some still remember that during the war, Jahorina was a headquarters of Bosnia's most wanted war crimes suspect, Serb wartime leader, Radovan Karadzic.

"I will never ski on Jahorina again. It was Karadzic's shelter and is still a Serb mountain and I do not want to spend my money there. Bjelasnica is our mountain," Senad Ridzic, a 45-year-old Muslim said while taking a break from skiing on Mt. Bjelasnica.

Since Bosnia's 1992-95 war, in which 260,000 people were killed and another 1.6 million were left homeless, local officials and private entrepreneurs have been doing their best to bring Jahorina back to where it was during its glory days in the 1980s.

New hotels have been built, old ones reconstructed, and ice skating rings built. But the resort needs more infrastructure.

"We need new lifts that are modern and with more capacity. Until this is done we cannot expect European guests in great numbers," said Dragan Sokolovic, deputy director of Jahorina's Olympic ski center.

Sokolovic is convinced that Jahorina has a bright future.

"In the entire former Yugoslavia, only on Jahorina can you see Serbs, Croats, Muslims and others from former Yugoslavia, skiing, drinking and singing together," Sokolovic said.

"Jahorina's highest moment was during the 1984 Winter Olympic Games, the lowest was during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. Now we have to work hard to restore its image of one of the most beautiful ski resorts on the Balkans," he said.

January 31, 2006 4:28 AM