July 16, 1996
Bosnia Campaign Postponed, Giving Serbs More Time to Oust Karadzic
By RAYMOND BONNER
ARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The Western diplomat in charge of overseeing the coming Bosnian elections postponed on Monday the start of the campaign until Friday, to give the Bosnian Serbs a few more days to oust their political leader, Radovan Karadzic.
Robert Frowick, a retired American diplomat who is head of the Bosnia operation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said: "it is my unalterable position" that any political party with officers that have been indicted on war crimes charges cannot participate in the elections.
The only party in that category is Karadzic's Serbian Democratic Party, which is about the only organized Bosnian Serb party with any significant following. Karadzic, who has been indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, has said he will not run as a candidate in the national elections scheduled for Sept. 14 -- something that would not be allowed in any case under the Dayton peace accords -- but he was recently re-elected as head of his party and continues to control the police and politics in the Serb-held part of Bosnia.
Frowick's move is the latest "ratcheting up," as officials here put it, of the diplomatic pressure on Karadzic to give up his political positions, if not turn himself in to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague for trial.
On Tuesday, Richard C. Holbrooke, the American diplomat who pushed through the peace agreement last fall, is to arrive in the region and will try to pull off another coup: convincing the president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, that he must muscle Karadzic out, something no one so far has been able to persuade Milosevic to do. Holbrooke has left the government but was specially recalled for the trip.
Beneath the public maneuvering, however, there is widespread pessimism after six months of trying to oust Karadzic that any political solution is attainable, and a growing belief that only military action will remove him from the scene.
At a news conference here on Sunday, France's defense minister, Charles Million, said France planned to ask the U.N. Security Council to give the NATO forces in Bosnia a clearer mandate to arrest those indicted on charges of war crimes. But any joint action by NATO troops would require the assent of NATO's governing body, which many diplomats say is unlikely.
Under current orders, set by the United States and European powers in NATO, the forces in Bosnia are to arrest indicted war crimes suspects if they encounter them. But they are not supposed to seek them out, and military officers in the country say they fear that any action against Karadzic or Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military leader who is also under international indictment, would provoke deadly retaliation.
While France is now the first major power to openly discuss the possibility of a military operation, there is no public indication that the French would be willing to act on their own.
Britain, which has been strongly opposed to a military action, is "rethinking," a senior European diplomat said. And Carl Bildt, the principal international negotiator in Bosnia, has also recently come to the conclusion that a "military snatch" of Karadzic is necessary, an official close to him said.
The Clinton administration is divided on the issue. Some officials in the State Department strongly favor a military action, several American officials said in recent days. The Pentagon has said it is against such an operation because it would put American troops at risk.
But a few days ago, the commander of American forces in Bosnia, Gen. William L. Nash, in a meeting with Secretary of Commerce Mickey Kantor, said his troops had the ability to do the job. "Give us the order, and we'll do it," Nash said, according to people who were present.
Most important, President Clinton and White House officials, with an American presidential election coming in November, strongly want to avoid American casualties or a wholesale unraveling of the Bosnian peace effort -- clear risks of a military action.
Underscoring the potential risks, the police chief in Pale, the capital of the Bosnian Serb republic, has threatened wide reprisals against NATO troops and the U.N. police if there is an attempt to arrest Karadzic, a U.N. spokesman, Alex Ivanko, said here on Monday.
Many diplomats are skeptical that the latest diplomatic efforts will succeed in removing Karadzic, because the weapons that the outside powers have -- or are willing to deploy -- do not match their polemics against Karadzic. Western countries have not shown the unanimity that would be required to reimpose stiff economic sanctions, for instance.
A senior European diplomat said he thought that Milosevic was "immune" to any pressure Holbrooke might bring.
If the West reimposes sanctions, Milosevic is likely to counter by withdrawing his support for the Dayton peace plan, this diplomat said.
In any event, the Clinton administration is alone in favoring the reimposition of sanctions.
The so-called contact group on Bosnia is also divided over what to do about the elections. At the London meeting last week, only the United States and Germany backed the proposal of Frowick to keep the Serbian Democratic Party out of the election if Karadzic is still around. France had reservations, and the British even stronger ones, but they promised to keep them quiet, American and European diplomats said. The other member of the group, Russia, was largely quiet at the meeting but has previously said that no new actions against Karadzic were necessary.
The British said an election with Karadzic still in power would be better than disqualifying his party because that would alienate most Serbs.
Asked if he thought the new diplomatic efforts to oust Karaszic would work, a Western diplomat said: "I don't, and I don't know who does. But Holbrooke has pulled some things out before that nobody ever, ever thought possible."
