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Carl Bildt Attempts to Make City
New Focus of Serb Power in Bosnia
SARAJEVO, May 5 (Reuters) — Desperate to create a practical alternative to the hardline Bosnian Serb nationalists, NATO and international mediator Carl Bildt are investing heavily in the Serb city of Banja Luka and its opposition politicians. The NATO peace force moved one of its three divisional headquarters to Banja Luka last week to demonstrate a determined presence on Serb territory and to reinforce the city's importance as a locus of power in Bosnia.

Carl Bildt, the High Representative for Bosnia, left Sarajevo for Banja Luka on Sunday to open an office, and planned to spend virtually the entire week there in a series of high-profile meetings and visits. "Banja Luka is Bosnia's second largest city. It is the (urban) centre on the Serb side and we must stretch out to them and make sure they know what peace means," Bildt told Reuterss and CNN in an interview on Sunday.

The High Representative's campaign is an effort to undermine the political authority of Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, whose undiminished commitment to ethnic separatism threatens the Bosnian peace process. Bildt hoped to have dinner on Sunday with Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Rajko Kasagic, a man the international community is hoping could emerge as one of the non-nationalist alternatives to Karadzic in upcoming elections.

A virtual unknown before the signing of the Dayton peace agreement in December brought an end to Bosnia's 43-month war, Kasagic was plucked from relative obscurity by Bildt and others as a negotiating partner with whom they could work. The High Representative and NATO are prohibited from even meeting Karadzic because, as an indicted war criminal, he is barred by Dayton from holding or running for office.

Kasagic, who is from Banja Luka, is now a leading moderate in the Bosnian Serb republic although his actual power is said to be severely limited. Diplomatic sources said Karadzic, under pressure from the international community, had ordered Kasagic back from Banja Luka to the Bosnian Serb "capital" of Pale in order to limit his contact with Bildt this week.

"Banja Luka is everything Pale is not, especially urban and therefore more open to new ideas and influences. The effort is to build an alternative power centre to Pale, a place where Karadzic feels, and is in fact, vulnerable." Diplomats say the more politically and economically important Banja Luka becomes, the more time Karadzic would have to spend on the lengthy road journey between the two towns.

Rather than holing up in Pale he would have to expose himself regularly to the possibility of being grabbed by NATO troops as a war criminal while travelling cross country. There is considerable irony in Banja Luka's emergence as an alternative to hardline Bosnian Serb nationalists. During the war the region was frequently referred to by U.N. briefers as "the heart of darkness" because of its relentless and violent campaign to drive Muslims and Croats out of their homes and create ethnically pure Serb territory.

More than 500,000 people were "cleansed" from the area before the war ended. Virtually none has been allowed to return home despite being guaranteed that right under Dayton. But the people of Banja Luka got a fright at the end of the war when the tide suddenly turned, and Muslim and Croat forces overran large swathes of Serb territory in Croatia to the north, and then in Bosnia to the west and south. The city itself was threatened before the international community intervened and halted the Muslim-Croat drive.

Hordes of Serb refugees descended upon Banja Luka and with them a degree of disillusion over Karadzic's leadership, over which the city had always harbored some doubts.



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