Bid to Neutralize Serb Leader in Bosnia Falters

The pilgrimages began early this year. Ambassadors who had never set foot in Serb-controlled Bosnia came calling, as did Western bankers and once-banished aid workers.

Their not-secret, yet subversive, mission was to encourage an embryonic opposition to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, an indicted war crimes suspect. They hoped to build an alternative capital here to Pale, his wartime stronghold, populated with hard-liners.

Initially, it looked good. Two small but feisty opposition newspapers were circulating in Banja Luka. A strongly anti-Karadzic radio station enjoyed considerable popularity. Political parties were bustling.

But today the Banja Luka opposition is given little chance of making headway against the Pale machine, despite reports that Karadzic may finally be willing to step down.

Whether Karadzic resigns in the face of mounting international pressure, the separatist regime that he and his allies created remains in control.

In fact, there has even been speculation that Karadzic would run as a candidate in the upcoming presidential election--a direct violation of the U.S.-brokered peace accord that ended Bosnia’s war and bans those accused of genocide from seeking public office.

In Banja Luka, the opposition goes through the motions, having formed a political coalition for the Sept. 14 elections and appealed to Bosnian Serbs in exile, who will be allowed to take part in the vote.

“The risks are very big . . . but we have to be pragmatic,” said Miodrag Zivanovic, head of the tiny Liberal Party.

Zivanovic, a likely presidential candidate, edits an opposition newspaper--efforts that have earned him the label of spy and CIA mercenary in the Karadzic-controlled Bosnian Serb media.

From the start, the greatest historical irony was that Banja Luka, of all places, was being regarded as a potential bastion of moderation.

The northern city, the largest among the Bosnian Serb holdings, was the notorious center of an “ethnic cleansing” campaign during the war in which tens of thousands of Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbs were expelled or killed. Mosques were blown up, every trace erased.

Some of the politicians now courted by U.S. and European diplomats--such as Banja Luka Mayor Predrag Radic--were in office during this brutal period when the city was nicknamed the “Heart of Darkness.”

Opposition politicians say they find it next to impossible to crack the hold Karadzic’s people have on access to broadcast media and political and economic power.

That opposition to Karadzic could flourish here at all can in large part be attributed to Slobodan Milosevic, the president of Serbia and onetime patron of Bosnian Serbs.

Seeking obedient proxies and capitalizing on resentment toward Karadzic and the war profiteers around him, Milosevic promoted politicians from the local branch of his own Socialist Party to serve as a counterweight to Pale.

Wooing Banja Luka reflects the desperation of a policy of last resort. The West must look to a group of politicians only slightly less repugnant than the Pale clan because the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has steadfastly refused to arrest Karadzic.

Nowhere was the desperation, and failure, more evident than in recent attempts to support Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Rajko Kasagic, who cooperated with the peace process. As soon as Kasagic showed too much independence, Karadzic clipped his wings, and Kasagic’s public life was finished.

And this week, Radic, the Banja Luka mayor, found that his flirtations with the West cost him his membership in Karadzic’s Serbian Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

International mediators insist that they will continue to approach more palatable Bosnian Serb politicians “wherever we find them,” in the words of one. But they admit that they are losing ground against Karadzic.