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Bosnian Serbs to Belgrade for Talks on Karadzic
NATO peacekeepers cleared the helicopter flight
They were expected to have talks with Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic ahead of a return visit to Belgrade by U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke who is pressing Milosevic to extradite Karadzic for trial.
NATO peacekeepers cleared the helicopter flight from the Bosnian Serb government seat of Pale by Bosnian Serb parliament speaker Momcilo Krajisnik and Foreign Minister Aleksa Buha. They were accompanied by Milosevic's security chief Jovica Stansic and Nikola Sainovic, a deputy Yugoslav prime minister and senior official of the ruling Socialist party.
Holbrooke was expected to return to Belgrade later in the day after talks in Sarajevo with the Muslim-led Bosnian
government which threatened to boycott inter-ethnic elections in September if Karadzic were not removed from public life. The U.S. mediator cautioned after a first round of talks with Milosevic on Wednesday against expectations that Karadzic's extradition to the U.N. court in The Hague was imminent.
Architect of the 1995 Dayton peace treaty on Bosnia, Holbrooke returned this week to rescue sagging Western efforts
to dislodge Karadzic but said a first round of talks with Milosevic on Wednesday was "inconclusive." "I don't want to leave you...with the expectation that we are going to come home with a triumph,"" Holbrooke said in an interview with Cable News Network on Wednesday night.
Karadzic has turned "executive power" over to his deputy Biljana Plavsic but has remained at the head of the ruling Serb Democratic Party (SDS) which is dedicated to the failure of the Bosnian peace plan. The Bosnian Serb wartime leader has become an uncomfortable symbol of Serb resistance to ethnic reintegration in Bosnia and of Western indecision.
The U.S. and its allies have called repeatedly for his ouster but have done nothing practical to bring it about despite having 50,000 peacekeeping troops in Bosnia and recourse to U.N. sanctions against the Serbs at their disposal. The preferred Western method has been to put pressure on
Milosevic to effect Karadzic's removal.
While the Serbian president has the military means, any attempt by Belgrade would inflame nationalists in rump Yugoslavia and the Bosnian Serb republic who already accuse Milosevic of betraying them by signing a disadvantageous peace. |
PALE, Bosnia, July 18 (Reuters) - Senior Bosnian Serb and Yugoslav officials flew to Belgrade on Thursday to discuss
intensifying world pressure for the arrest of Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic to face U.N. war crimes charges.
Berserkistan, July 17 · Holbrooke Mission Fails to Remove Karadzic
Berserkistan, July 17 · Holbrooke Urges Milosevic to Surrender Radovan Karadic
Berserkistan, July 17 · NATO Won’t Rule Out Military Action in Capturing Karadzic
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