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Bosnian Election Delay: Where the Players Stand From wire service reports
Here is a synopsis of the positions of the key players.
Aleksa Buha, the Bosnian Serb foreign minister, dismissed Frowick's warning. "If the SDS is excluded, then there won't be any elections in the Serb Republic," he told a rally of Serbs celebrating the sixth anniversary of the party's founding. Western concern with Bosnia's slide towards formal partition was highlighted with the disclosure that the U.S. architect of Dayton was returning to seek Karadzic's ouster.
The U.N. tribunal issued international arrest warrants for the two last week, exactly one year after Serb forces captured Srebrenica and massacred thousands of fleeing Muslims. |
SARAJEVO, July 14 - On Sunday, the OSCE put the brakes on Bosnia's election campaign, urging Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to use the time in order to step down from office. The campaign was scheduled to start Monday, but the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said it would now start July 19. The reason for the four-day delay, the organization’s spokeswoman Johanna van Vliet said, was "to offer the opportunity for Karadzic to step down for the sake of the Serbian people."
Hasan Muratovic did not expressly warn of a Bosnian Muslim pullout from the September 14 elections. Such a step would anger Western powers who are determined to stage the vote even if flawed and control the purse strings of reconstruction aid for Bosnia. His words served notice that a vote meant by Dayton to reintegrate Bosnia would be discredited in Muslim eyes if Karadzic, an ultra-separatist who only nominally accepted the treaty terms, retained supremacy over half the country. Analysts fear the ballot could ratify Bosnia's partition anyway because ethnic nationalist parties dominate Muslim, Serb and Croat power centres in the former Yugoslav republic. "I think it is beyond the dignity of the Bosnian people to vote in the presence of elections including the Serb entity," Bosnian Prime Minister Hasan Muratovic told Reuterss.
Biljana Plavsic, the hardline vice president to whom Karadzic delegated his functions, said at the weekend that the Bosnian Serbs would not deviate from their crusade to ratify the "statehood" of their entity, the Serb Republic. "A divided Bosnia is a reality that must be accepted," she said in an interview with a Serbian newspaper. Plavsic met with Robert Frowick on Thursday and her party was urged by the diplomat to participate in the elections.
Robert Frowick, head of the Bosnia office of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe which is arranging the elections, has threatened to disqualify the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) from the campaign unless Karadzic quits as party leader.
Richard Holbrooke, who returned to business after negotiating Dayton as U.S. assistant secretary of state, will come back to the region on Monday at the behest of President Bill Clinton, the New York Times reported. He will lean on Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to depose Karadzic and Bosnian Serb army commander General Ratko Mladic, also indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity.
Berserkistan, July 14 · OSCE Delays Start of Bosnian Elections
Berserkistan, July 12 · Bosnia’s Government May Boycott Elections
Berserkistan, July 12 · Bosnia’s Ruling Party said Responsible for Attack on Siladjzic
Berserkistan, July 12 · Bosnia Mediator Likens Karadzic to Nazi’s Himmler
Berserkistan, July 12 · War Crimes Chief Slams Yugoslavia for Failure to Arrest Karadzic
Berserkistan, July 10 · Frowick Discusses SDS Election Ban with Serbia’s Milosevic
Berserkistan, July 8 · OSCE Says Karadic’s Party Could be Barred from Elections
Berserkistan, July 8 · Call to Bar SDS in Elections Catches Sarajevo by Surprise
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