Muslim-Croat Police Force Bars Monitors, U.N. Says

In an apparent violation of the Bosnian peace accord, officers in the Muslim-Croat police force are refusing to let international monitors watch them work, the United Nations said Wednesday.

The police monitors were barred from patrolling with the force in the formerly Serbian suburb of Ilidza and denied access to its duty room, despite provisions in the accord that call for them to observe the local police’s day-to-day work, U.N. officials said.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, meanwhile, acknowledged fault in another dispute with the international community--the presence of Iranian fighters in Bosnia in violation of the U.S.-brokered peace accord.

Under the accord, all foreign military forces were to have left Bosnia-Herzegovina by Jan. 19. But in mid-February, French troops raided a military training camp in central Bosnia, detaining three Iranians and confiscating weapons and explosives. Western intelligence sources believe there are up to 10 such secret training camps.

Izetbegovic sought to allay U.S. fears of a threat from Iranian influences in Bosnia, saying in an interview published Wednesday that his country now needs the United States--not Iran--to survive.

Izetbegovic told the weekly Ljiljan that the camp raided by French soldiers in February “was our big mistake, and a violation of what we signed.”