June 4, 1996
Mixed Signals Over Bosnia on Catching War Criminals
By PHILIP SHENON
ASHINGTON -- Pentagon officials said on Monday that NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia were not stepping up their efforts to catch accused war criminals, despite the insistence of Secretary of State Warren Christopher on Sunday that the troops would start conducting more aggressive patrols, increasing the likelihood of arrests.
The Pentagon officials said, in fact, that NATO commanders remained reluctant to become involved, fearing that arresting war crime suspects could imperil peacekeepers in the American-led NATO mission.
Defense Department officials insisted that there was no major policy split between the State Department and the Pentagon over the issue, but described this as another instance in which a senior Western diplomat, frustrated by NATO's unwillingness to risk conflict by bringing the suspects to trial, had cast NATO policy in tougher terms than military leaders would use. Of the 60,000-man peacekeeping force, roughly 19,000 are Americans.
Lt. Col. Rick Scott, a Defense Department spokesman, said: "I do not know of any fundamental changes in the mission."
The NATO force, he said, is "increasing its dispersal throughout the countryside, with the focus on freedom of movement as we approach the September elections."
But Scott said the expanded patrols, which began fanning out across the country in mid-April as the soldiers completed other duties, had been in the planning for months.
The policy since the peacekeeping operation began has been that suspects would only be arrested if they confronted NATO troops.
Christopher met last weekend with the leaders of Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia and said afterwards that NATO peacekeepers "will conduct more visible and proactive patrols through the country" to insure greater freedom of movement for civilians before elections this fall and to put war criminals "at greater risk of apprehension."
His remarks seemed intended as a threat to the Bosnian Serb leadership, suggesting that the orders given to NATO troops had changed and that they would be more aggressive in searching out and arresting people suspected of war crimes.
The Bosnian Serb civilian leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his military counterpart, Gen. Ratko Mladic, have both been indicted by a war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands.
Western officials have hoped that the two would be out of power before Bosnian elections, which under the Dayton accord should be held by Sept. 14, but NATO has been unwilling to use force to oust them or arrest them.
Scott said he knew of no change in the NATO policy on apprehension of war criminals, although he said that with expanded patrols in the countryside in recent weeks, American troops might be more likely to make contact with suspects, and were therefore more likely to arrest them.
Pentagon officials had hoped that the scattering of thousands of American and other NATO troops around the country might also limit the political viability of Karadzic and his associates wanted by the war crimes tribunal, since their freedom of movement would be constrained.
The issue of NATO involvement in the apprehension of war crimes suspects has become an embarrassment to the Clinton administration, with Christopher and others repeatedly promising tough action by NATO in dealing with the suspects, but with little follow-through on the ground in Bosnia. So far only a handful of the suspects wanted by the war crimes tribunal have been apprehended, and Karadzic and Mladic remain free and in power -- defiantly so.
There has been no open dissension between the State Department and the Pentagon over the issue, although some senior State Department officials are clearly eager to see the American military play a more aggressive role.
In an American election year, the issue is an especially tricky one for the Clinton administration, which does not want to be accused of coddling war criminals, or see the peace effort bog down over the issue. But at the same time, the administration is even more anxious to avoid the prospect of American soldiers being shot in retaliation for arresting war-crimes suspects.
Another Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said NATO commanders in Bosnia are determined not to become part of a manhunt for the suspects.
"They believe that for them to be credible, they have to be neutral," the official said of NATO commanders," he said. "If Americans became involved in the arrests of war criminals, you become a partisan, and that isn't going to work. There's a fear there."
In his remarks on Sunday in Geneva, Christopher said the NATO force "considers it an important part of its mission to apprehend those indicted war criminals with whom it comes into contact."
But in private conversations, many American and other NATO commanders in the Balkans say precisely the opposite -- that they consider their mission in Bosnia as one strictly of peacekeeping, not of policing the country for war criminals.
"I will not see my soldiers put at risk unnecessarily, and we are put at risk if we arrest some of these characters, even under the best of conditions," an American commander in Bosnia said in an interview last month.
Other Places of Interest on the WebThe Dayton Peace Accords, Provided by the U.S. Department of State BosniaLINK, provided by the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia The United Nations The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
