ROANOKE TIMES  
                      Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times

DATE: Friday, December 1, 1995               TAG: 9512010044
SECTION: BUSINESS                 PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO  
SOURCE: MAGGIE JACKSON Associated Press
MEMO: ***CORRECTION***
      Published correction ran on December 5, 1995.
         As Associated Press story about efforts to assist U.S. businesses 
      interested in helping to rebuild Bosnia, gave an incorrect Internet 
      address Friday for the Commerce Department's Bosnia home page.
         The correct address is http:/www.itaiep.doc.gov/eebic/ceebic.htmln 

U.S. COMPANIES READY BUT WARY TO JOIN REBUILDING EFFORT IN BOSNIA

THERE ARE DIFFERENCES between this situation and that in Kuwait. For one thing, Bosnia is broke, while Kuwait had deep pockets.

The Department of Commerce is setting up a telephone hot line and a World Wide Web computer page and fielding a stream of calls from U.S. businesses interested in helping rebuild a shattered Bosnia.

Yet unlike Kuwait following the Gulf War, most American companies aren't in a rush to help repair the region wracked by more than three years of war. U.S. businesses are interested but wary.

They worry about the staying power of the peace accord reached Nov. 21 following bitter ethnic fighting. But more important, Bosnia is broke. By contrast, oil-rich Kuwait had deep pockets.

``Certainly, U.S. companies are interested in helping Bosnia and the region, but they want to get paid,'' said Willard Workman, an official of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where businesses also are calling to learn more about the reconstruction picture.

``And businesspeople are like people everywhere: They don't like to get to shot at,'' he said.

Bosnia's needs are great. Roads, rail lines, sewage pipes are in disrepair, and communication lines are poor - a situation that attracts rebuilders but deters potential long-term investors. Many of the 2 million refugees need homes.

The World Bank has estimated that priority projects alone in Bosnia will cost $4 billion to $6 billion. Long-term rebuilding in both Bosnia and neighboring Croatia could cost billions more.

That's a far cry from the $100 billion originally estimated to be needed by Kuwait after seven months of Iraqi occupation ending in 1991. But some businesspeople recall that Kuwait's actual needs fell far short of that ultimately - a lesson for those looking to Bosnia.

``Certainly, the interest [in Bosnia] is there. But when Kuwait had to be rebuilt after the war, there wasn't the level of business that was originally anticipated,'' said Don Galletly, a spokesman for Dallas-based Dresser Industries Inc., an energy services company. ``We don't have any particular contingency plans for Bosnia.''

Whatever the final price tag, it's also unclear how the cost will be divvied among donors.

Bosnia can't foot the bill. Its economy is a shambles, with most factories and farms destroyed and only a few springing slowly back.

``We are ruined now, but we are trying,'' said Sead Buljina, manager for a Bosnian housing manufacturer that has restarted production after four years. Buljina spoke by telephone from Washington during a U.S. government-sponsored tour aimed at teaching reconstruction to him and a colleague.

To attract investment, the country also may need to adopt the market-economy reforms of its formerly socialist neighbors.

For now, Bosnia can't belong to the World Bank - an important source of financial help - until its debts of nearly $500 million to the Bank and the International Monetary Fund are cleared up.

President Clinton says Washington hopes to contribute $600 million toward reconstruction.

But, unlike in Kuwait, where U.S. leadership in the war led to Yankee domination in postwar contracts, the Clinton administration wants Europe to take the lead in rebuilding.

``It's their part of the world, and they want to be out front and we want to let them,'' said Ann Kittlaus, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Agency for International Development, which would dispense most of the $600 million to Bosnia and to U.S. firms helping there.

Already, Europeans are off to a strong start. The European Union has pledged $1 billion, and European companies have landed reconstruction contracts in Bosnia.

The Commerce Department's Bosnia Home Page address is http://www.italep.doc.gov/eebic/cee bic.html

The Bosnia Hot line telephone number is (202) 482-5418.

The Bosnia Flashfax service telephone number is (800) 872-8723.

LENGTH: Medium:   87 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP. Residents of Mostar in Bosnia walk near an  
          improvised bridge spanning the Neretva River on Thursday. The old  
          bridge was destroyed in the ethnic conflict. Gra[phic: Chart by AP: 
          Rebuilding Bosnia.