At a festival - designed to bring normality back to Mostar - wooden puppets play to rows of rapt, excited faces. Nigel Osbourne, a Scottish Professor of Music, works with the War Child charity to repair young minds scarred by the war. Now enjoying the golden princess and the evil villain on stage, they once suffered snipers, bombardment and hand to hand fighting. Both Serbian and Croat artillery has transformed Mostar - with its antique bridge spanning an emerald green river - into skeletal blocks of rubble. In the Croatian West, little touched by the fighting, glitzy shopping centres pulse with black market cash. But, in spite of the Dayton accord, Croatian politicians want ethnic segregation to remain for children as well as adults. So only the Muslim East celebrates youth festivals and TV programmes sponsored by UNICEF. "If it was up to children, there would have been no war", asserts one girl.