But they're 'trying as hard as they can,' says NATO
SARAJEVO, April 18 (From Wire Service Reports) — Bosnia’s former warring parties will fail to meet a midnight deadline to pull back soldiers and heavy weapons, though they are “trying as hard as they can,” a NATO spokesman said Thursday. “They won’t have actually met the full requirements of the deadline by midnight tonight,” said Maj. Simon Haselock. “What we are saying is: This is not willful.” A senior NATO official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the pullback was unlikely to finish in the next few weeks. All previous deadlines have been largely met by the three sides in Bosnia.Under the Dayton peace agreement, the parties were obliged to withdraw to barracks some 150,000 soldiers. Also by midnight (1000 GMT) Thursday, 800 tanks, 1,300 artillery pieces and thousands of mortars and anti-aircraft weapons were to be moved to storage sites previously approved by NATO. Another 150,000 soldiers listed on all three sides should be demobilized.
NATO officials stressed the enormous problems for all three sides which, even after 43 months of vicious fighting, still lack organization and coordination. One NATO official said three different Bosnian Serb brigades, unaware of each other’s plans, wanted to move into the same barracks. In addition, the armies lack transportation capabilities, housing and fuel. “The magnitude of the task has meant that, even given the best will in the world, they haven’t been able to do it,” Haselock said.
NATO commanders are to meet on Saturday in Ilidza, a western Sarajevo suburb, to assess compliance.
Now, About Mladic and Karadzic . . .
NATO expects pressure to detain indicted war criminals to intensify once Bosnia's armies have withdrawn to barracks and containment sites as they are supposed to do by midnight on Thursday. "The worry is we may be victims of our own success. Having supervised the disengagement of the three armies, the logical question is what we're going to do for the next eight months," a NATO officer who asked not to be named said on Thursday.
"Getting Karadzic and Mladic before the war crimes tribunal is the loosest of many loose ends in the peace process. We're expecting to come under more public pressure to go after them." Although Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander, General Ratko Mladic, have both been twice indicted for war crimes the two strongmen still cling to power.
Karadzic, especially, is said by international officials concerned with Bosnia's postwar development to be frustrating the peace process by continuing to insist on the ethnic separatist policies which fuelled Bosnia's 43-month war and its worst excesses.
U.S. Concerned Over Somalia Scenario
The United States is particularly anxious to avoid a repeat of the humiliation it suffered in Somalia when the hunt for a warlord in Mogadishu turned to catastrophe and a number of American soldiers were slaughtered on the streets of the city. Senior NATO commanders in Bosnia are so wary of being assigned the task of rounding up Karadzic and Mladic that their staff officers are reluctant to even be quoted on the subject. Off the record, they reckon NATO has the military means to track and capture the men, though not without casualties."We are not keen to take casualties in pursuit of these men and of course there is always a danger that one of them might be killed, which could make them into martyrs and worsen the situation," said a NATO officer who asked not to be named. Karadzic and Mladic travel with a retinue of bodyguards buhave been spotted by reporters in various parts of Bosnia. NATO policy is to apprehend indicted war criminals if it comes upon them in the normal course of its duties.
Alliance commanders are clearly hoping Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, who pulls the strings in Serb-held Bosnia, will fulfil his Dayton obligations by handing Karadzic and Mladic over to the tribunal, relieving NATO troops of the job.
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