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Resolving the Karadzic Problem: 'Now Is The Time for Action' 
SARAJEVO, May 16 (Reuters) — The international community has hardline Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic in its sights and mediator Carl Bildt wants Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to pull the trigger. "Carl Bildt's position is that Milosevic is not doing enough to resolve the Karadzic problem, that he must do more, that now is the time for action," Bildt spokesman Colum Murphy said in Sarajevo on Thursday.
Bosnian Serb "president" Karadzic, twice-indicted for war crimes, was supposed to step down from office after the signing of the Dayton peace agreement last December. Instead, he and his army commander General Ratko Mladic, also twice-indicted, have clung to power, obstructing the peace process and threatening to disrupt Bosnia-wide elections scheduled for September. After lying low for months, Karadzic surfaced on Wednesday to dismiss his moderate Prime Minister Rajko Kasagic whom the international community had been grooming as an alternative Bosnian Serb leader. Sources in Bildt's office said on Thursday Kasagic had told them his dismissal was illegal until confirmed by the Bosnian Serb parliament. NATO peacekeeping troops in Bosnia have declined to hunt down Karadzic at his base in Pale outside Sarajevo for fear of a backlash from the local Serb population. That has left Milosevic, who negotiated and signed the peace agreement on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs, as the likeliest candidate to deliver his two former proteges to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague. As a signatory to the agreement, Milosevic assumed responsibility for handling the delicate problem of Karadzic and Mladic, Bildt maintains. "We're trying to encourage Milosevic to act but he's been holding back," Bildt said. Meantime, a top Bosnian official deplored the U.S.-led international peacekeeping force’s reluctance to arrest suspected Serb war criminals, warning that chances for free elections are being jeopardized. “The international community has to put in jail those accused of war crimes and to cure this disease so the nation can become healthy,” Ejup Ganic, vice president of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat federation, said Wednesday. “So this is the issue: we have Karadzic and Mladic and IFOR under the same roof,” Ganic said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I don’t think its comfortable for both sides. Those two guys are the main obstacles to elections. Everybody knows that,” Ganic said. Ganic was in Washington with a Muslim-Croat delegation that met Tuesday with top U.S. administration officials and agreed to merge their armed forces within three years. A Muslim, Ganic said the Croats wanted to create a federal defense establishment comprising “joint forces” in which each side would retain separate units. The Muslim proposal for an integrated force prevailed, he said. Integration of the armed forces will start at the headquarters level and spread down to the tactical level, Ganic said. Eventually, both sides are to disband units with ethnic designations. |
Berserkistan, May 13 · Bosnian Serbs in Banja Luka Fear War Will Return
Berserkistan, May 10 · Bildt Wins Commitment from Moderate Serbs in Banja Luka
Berserkistan May 5 · Banja Luka Moderates Seen as Serb Successors
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