"Muslims? I don't see them. We even do not even say hello to each other," said Ivana, a 13-year-old, with a sincere smile and long brown hair framing her face.

"Parents and teachers advise us not to talk to them. There was a war and the wounds have not yet healed," added the young Croat, surrounded by her friends who also say they have no Muslim friends.

The girls cite several rules which have to be strictly obeyed in the school attended by some 900 children: Muslims like Croats have their own benches in a school yards, separate entrances into the building, as well as classrooms -- on the ground-floor for Croats and on the first floor for Muslims.

It is actually "two schools under one roof," a compromise accepted in 1999 by the Balkan country's ruling nationalists under strong pressure of the international community.

Some 50 schools were included in the project, in the regions where Croats and Muslims still live next to each other.

For most of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, Croats and Muslims fought side by side against Bosnian Serbs. However, the two sides also fiercely fought one another for about 11 months of the conflict.

A former frontline that former neighbors have marked in the downtown Gornji Vakuf, in central Bosnia, is still burdening the mind of some 20,000 people who live in ethnically "pure" neighborhoods.

The idea of putting the pupils in the same building in order to bring them closer together, and eventually in mixed classes, met strong opposition of local politicians who want to ensure that their views be applied in real life.

"In our school children learn Croatian, while Muslims learn Bosnian. Now they want to impose on us mixed classes and only one language, while the two are different," headmaster of the Croat school Jozo Jurina said.

"This solution is just nourishing antagonism."

"If a third, mixed school is open, no child would enroll there," Jurina emphasized.

For Jasminka Drino-Kirlic, a teacher of Bosnian language in the Muslim school, it is a "classic segregation."

For the past three decades she had been teaching Yugoslav literature and one common language to all children, regardless of their ethnicity. Today, she has to teach young Muslims only.

"We bring up generations which believe that ethnic division is a rule. We additionally widen the gap heading towards a new war," emphasized Drino-Kirlic, who also runs as a volunteer a youth center, the only one in the town visited by some 300 youngsters, both Croats and Muslims.

In that "no man's land" located on the former frontline, which is still mentally inerasable for most of the town's inhabitants, children participate in informatics, drama or foreign languages classes -- in mixed groups. To the great displeasure of local politicians, all functions perfectly well.

"The center is seen as a danger since it proves that it is possible to work together," Drino-Kirlic said.

"Sometimes young Croats and Muslims are falling in love but they are afraid that the news will spread in the town."

Eldar, a Muslim pupil, confirms that possibility: "I prefer Croat girls but I would never date them."

My friends would not approve it," he admits shyly.