In Russia, Bosnia Serb Leader Blasts U.S.

Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, blasted the United States on Wednesday for usurping the role of the United Nations in making peace in the former Yugoslav federation, saying Russia is a more “impartial and reliable” mediator in the conflict.

“I don’t think that the United States of America could be possibly at the same time biased in favor of Muslims and impartial,” he said on the second day of a visit to Russia, a traditional patron that has pressured the Bosnian Serbs into two major concessions that the United Nations has been unable to extract from them.

Lashing back, Karadzic said the United Nations should not be “abandoned,” leaving only one power--presumably the United States--to arbitrate the conflict.

Speaking to reporters in English and Russian, Karadzic said he is still studying the agreement signed Tuesday in Washington between the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bosnian Croat separatists to form a federated state, whose boundaries would include large chunks of territory now under Serbian control.

Outmaneuvered by both Washington and Moscow, Karadzic touted Slavic solidarity, then headed off to watch a soccer match with Russia’s best-known booster of the Serbs, ultranationalist Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky.

Zhirinovsky, who has said that any NATO air strikes against the Serbs in Bosnia would be tantamount to a declaration of war against Russia, had met with Karadzic during a recent visit to the former Yugoslav federation.

“We understand each other quite well,” Zhirinovsky said. “He speaks in Russian without translators, and we are satisfied with each other’s positions.”

It would be best for Russia to be neutral in the conflict in the former Yugoslav republics, Zhirinovsky said. “But in principle, we are more on the side of the Slavic peoples and Orthodox peoples.”

He also heaped scorn on the United States’ latest efforts to try to resolve the Muslim-Croat conflict. “What is new in the American initiative? There is nothing new,” Zhirinovsky said. “They are threatening, setting conditions. The best initiative would be to leave Bosnia, Herzegovina and Montenegro (the last of which composes, with Serbia, the rump Yugoslavia) in peace.”

Zhirinovsky and his Liberal Democratic Party’s “shadow foreign minister,” lawmaker Alexei V. Mitrofanov, said that, in principle, they support a withdrawal of all foreign troops from the former Yugoslav federation.

Mitrofanov said he believes that “the United States has an interest in keeping up this source of destabilization in the center of Europe.” Nevertheless, he called the Russian initiative to send peacekeepers in return for Serbian concessions “a step in the direction we pointed out.”

“It is good to have Russian troops in Bosnia,” Mitrofanov said. “To try bombing Bosnia while there are 400 Russian paratroopers in blue helmets there is to walk on a tightrope.”

In fact, while expressing deep sympathy with its traditional Serbian allies and fellow Orthodox Christians--thus depriving Zhirinovsky and his nationalist allies of sole political ownership of the emotional issue--Moscow has twice in the last two weeks forced the Bosnian Serbs to bow to international demands.

Russian promises to send peacekeepers to Sarajevo helped persuade the Bosnian Serbs to comply with a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ultimatum to remove or surrender heavy artillery inside a 12-mile zone around Sarajevo by Feb. 21. And on Tuesday, Karadzic and Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev announced that the Bosnian Serbs will allow the Tuzla airport to reopen, provided Russian observers are present to guarantee that only humanitarian cargo is brought in.

The latter concession, which came only a day after NATO shot down four Bosnian Serb warplanes, was “difficult for them,” said Vladimir F. Shumeiko, chairman of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian Parliament.