Bosnian Serb Boss Digs in to Challenge Peace Accord

Struggling for his political survival, Bosnian Serb leader and indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic used a session of his self-declared parliament Sunday to add hard-liners to his fading government and to challenge the new Bosnian peace accord.

Karadzic, who at times had to shout over the protests of his angry followers at the daylong meeting at a former ski resort nine miles east of here, was attempting to tighten his tenuous hold on power even as the peace process that would end his reign moves forward.

The peace treaty, signed in Paris last week by the presidents of Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, will bring 20,000 U.S. soldiers, as one-third of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization peacekeeping force, to this bloodied country.

Not surprisingly, the Bosnian Serb parliament members voted to reject the portion of the treaty that restores Serb-held suburbs around Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, to government control, one of the most contentious points of the plan.

And in what some analysts saw as a provocative gesture, the assembly voted to transfer its institutions to the largest of those Serbian suburbs, Ilidza, according to Bosnian Serb television, monitored in Sarajevo. The move would be to “protect” the Bosnian Serbs living in those areas, and the parliament issued a plea for people not to move from Ilidza to Pale, the declining Bosnian Serb stronghold near the meeting site, an exodus that many Serbian residents have been threatening.

“The Dayton solutions, from the point of view of all Serbs, are disasters,” Karadzic said, referring to the city in Ohio where the treaty was drafted and initialed.

The gathering also voted its support for Karadzic and declared that he should not be tried by an international war crimes tribunal at The Hague. The assembly “denies the right of The Hague tribunal to qualify as a crime the struggle of the leadership for its own people.”

But in the mixed-message style that is typical of the Bosnian Serb leadership, the parliament also voted to allow Karadzic to negotiate the terms for NATO deployment in Bosnian Serb territory--a tacit admission that the arrival of peacekeeping troops is inevitable.

Karadzic, ostracized by his onetime mentor, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, is considered increasingly irrelevant by Serbia and Washington, and is barred from public office under the peace agreement. He faces mounting opposition from his own people, especially many rank-and-file Bosnian Serbs who feel betrayed, as well as from a new crop of Bosnian Serb politicians in the northern city of Banja Luka who are loyal to Milosevic.

Yet the former psychiatrist who championed a brutal brand of ethnic warfare has so far refused to step down, holding on to a platform that some diplomats fear he will use to sabotage the peace process.

Appearing on Bosnian Serb television Friday, Karadzic declined to answer a question about whether he would be a candidate in elections that the Dayton accord requires be held in six to nine months. “In any case, I will do what is best for my people,” he said.

With Sunday’s stormy parliament session at Mt. Jahorina, Karadzic appeared to have staved off, for now, attempts by the Bosnian Serbs of Banja Luka to oust him. But analysts in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, and Western diplomats say this survival is only a temporary dodge.

“I’d say his chances for long-term political survival are nil,” said one Western diplomat here.

There has been speculation that Karadzic would be replaced by his vice president, Nikola Koljevic, a Shakespeare scholar whom some diplomats in the West find more palatable. Koljevic attended the meeting Sunday but apparently did not resign or otherwise attempt to remove himself from the Karadzic regime.

The assembly also voted to counter other elements of the peace plan, demanding access to the sea, the right to narrow a corridor leading to the Muslim enclave of Gorazde and the ability to confederate with Serbia proper, according to reports from Pale by Fonet, an independent news agency in Belgrade. Most of the objections are largely symbolic, however, since Milosevic signed the peace pact on the Bosnian Serbs’ behalf.

Milosevic declined an invitation to the meeting, Bosnian Serb officials said.

Karadzic named either hard-liners or loyal followers to his government. He placed the chief of his state security, Dragan Kijic, at the head of the interior ministry, a last bastion of pro-Karadzic support. The ministry controls the police and border guards.

Another sign that the Bosnian Serb leadership was digging in came with a new order to seal off the Bosnian Serb territory around Sarajevo, ending rare freedom of movement given recently to journalists to come and go from the Serb-held districts over the last couple of weeks.

The new order, which U.N. sources said came from Karadzic’s daughter, Sonia, who heads the Bosnian Serbs’ international press center, violates the spirit and letter of the peace accords, which provide for freedom of movement, U.N. and U.S. officials said.

Wilkinson reported from Sarajevo, Murphy from Belgrade, Yugoslavia.