When journalist Michael Nicholson covered the battle-ravaged Sarajevo during the summer of 1992, war was nothing new to the British television reporter. He had acquired 29 years of experience and witnessed 4,000 famine-stricken children wasting away in a refugee camp in Biafra and Vietnamese mothers throwing their babies onto the decks of departing ships at Da Nang.”One of the things that’s so hard in reporting war is the casualties are not warriors,” he said. “It’s the people. Nine out of 10 of those who died in the Bosnian war were civilians.”A visit to a Sarajevan hospital after a mortar attack prompted Nicholson to smuggle a 9-year-old girl named Natasha from an orphanage in the city to his home in England. His experiences inspired him to write a book called “Natasha’s Story,” that will be released in the United States as “Welcome to Sarajevo,” the same title as the film starring Stephen Dillane, Woody Harrelson and Marisa Tomei scheduled to open Jan. 9.A doctor at the hospital took Nicholson and his camera crew to children injured in the attack, where the group focused the camera on each child and explained their situations, Nicholson said.”Go to little Dudic who is nine,” he said, reenacting his original news commentary. “He was playing in the garden this morning but has now lost his lungs. This is Sabrina, who’s got a shot in the heart and will not last until morning.”The team’s reporting method was effective, because it made the victims more real in the eyes of the television viewers, making them take notice of the situation in Bosnia, Nicholson said.”We came to this one little girl, about 10 (years old), with a beautiful face, absolutely angelic,” he said. “We pulled back the sheets, and she didn’t have a body.”The following week, the crew concentrated on the children affected by the war in an effort to start an evacuation and filmed at an orphanage in a cellar, where 200 children lived. Among these orphans was a “plucky” little girl named Natasha, who had been left there by her mother as a baby, Nicholson said.Nicholson vowed to rescue Natasha from the dangers of war-torn Sarajevo, but the girl’s future looked bleak after he pled his case to United Nations and UNICEF to no avail, Nicholson said.Nicholson said he then persuaded agents from the First Children’s Embassy to take himself and Natasha out of the city with a convoy of children who were being sent to live in foster homes for the remainder of the war. Natasha posed as Nicholson’s daughter for the airplane ride from Croatia to England, during which, if discovered, Natasha risked being sent back to Bosnia, Nicholson said.”I bought her a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and lots of British newspapers to carry,” he said.Today, Natasha still resides in England with Nicholson and his wife, Diana, and has never been the subject of an interview and has appeared on television only once. Nicholson said he and Diana have agreed with Miramax that Natasha receive no unwanted publicity regarding “Welcome to Sarajevo.” The couple has also decided that their adopted daughter not watch the movie just yet.Natasha’s adjustment to her new life in England with Nicholson, Diana and their two grown sons was relatively easy for her, Nicholson said.”I’m actually one of those people who believe it doesn’t matter where you come from,” he said. “I think all children want is what a little starling in the nest wants: warmth, safety, comfort, food, love. You give them that, and they don’t care whether they come from Bosnia or Timbuktu.”If Natasha feels she needs to return to Bosnia when she turns 18 in three years, becoming an adult under British law, the decision will be hers, Nicholson said.”I hope she’ll stay my daughter until I’m carried out in a coffin,” he said, “but if that’s what she wants to do, that’s what she’ll do…She’ll be her own guide.”For now, Natasha has a typical family life, but, unlike most girls her age, she was asked by President Clinton to fly to Washington D.C. with Diana, news of which left Natasha relatively unimpressed, Nicholson said.”Tasha is a typical 15-year-old,” Nicholson said. “She said, ‘Oh that’s nice. I’d rather meet (British pop singer) Peter Andre.'”