Serb Leader in Bosnia Cedes Power to Loyalist

Radovan Karadzic, an indicted war crimes suspect who has repeatedly foiled international attempts to topple him, has handed over all powers of the so-called Bosnian Serb presidency to a hard-line loyalist, Western officials announced Sunday.

But Bosnian Serb officials, in a development that cast a heavy shadow over the announcement, insisted that although Karadzic has transferred power to ultranationalist Biljana Plavsic, he has not resigned as president and will continue to influence policy, at least until national elections in September.

“President Karadzic just used his constitutional right and . . . made a decision to transfer his authorities to one of the vice presidents, in this case myself,” Plavsic said in an interview distributed here in the Bosnian Serbs’ mountainside headquarters southeast of Sarajevo, the capital.

Plavsic, a former biology professor who once described the practice of “ethnic cleansing” as “a completely natural thing,” said she has assumed Karadzic’s duties because he is “temporarily incapable of fulfilling his functions.” She said Karadzic needs to devote all his time to the upcoming elections.

The unsettled situation, in the context of the ever-murky Balkan political scene, was seen by many observers as progress in the agonizing Western effort to sideline Karadzic. But no one was willing to claim more than a partial victory over Karadzic.

“We have a step in the right direction, but at the same time we don’t have what we want,” said Michael Steiner, deputy to High Representative Carl Bildt, the Swedish diplomat in charge of overseeing civilian aspects of last year’s U.S.-sponsored peace accord.

“There is a lot of talk going on right now,” Steiner said. “We are going to have to test what is the real behavior and what is rhetoric.”

Bildt, speaking to reporters in Stockholm, said he does not object to Karadzic continuing to call himself president so long as he no longer carries out the functions of the job.

“He can call himself emperor of China or Donald Duck as far as I am concerned,” Bildt said.

Despite being indicted on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity, the flamboyant and widely popular Karadzic was reelected chairman of the ruling Serbian Democratic Party over the weekend and was named to head the committee that will select candidates for the Sept. 14 elections.

Under the Dayton, Ohio, peace accord, he is prohibited from running in the elections and should have stepped down long ago. In May, he relinquished some duties to Plavsic, including dealings with the West, but he agreed to give up all powers now only under the threat of renewed international economic sanctions against the Serbs.

Even so, many residents of Pale, where he has wielded absolute power for four years, remain fiercely loyal to him.

“We managed to put up with sanctions for so many years, we can put up with them again,” said Bosiljka Savic, a Pale grandmother distraught by the prospect of losing Karadzic as her leader. “Without him, there is no life for us. Like the Serbs in Sarajevo, we will all have to go somewhere else.”

Bildt, who has been locked in a humiliating game of cat and mouse with Karadzic, said the decision was “an important step toward cleansing” the Bosnian Serb ministate, the Republika Srpska, “from association with the war crimes for which Karadzic has been indicted.”

Bildt acknowledged, however, that Karadzic will not go quietly, even with his signature and seal on a document Bildt regards as binding.

There was considerable consternation Sunday among some international officials, Western diplomats and opposition Bosnian Serb politicians that the wily Bosnian Serb leader was pulling yet another fast one on a well-intentioned but gullible international community.

Miodrag Zevanovic, leader of the opposition Social Liberal Party in the northern Bosnian Serb stronghold of Banja Luka, described Karadzic’s decision as a farce and said it did nothing to reduce his control over the Republika Srpska.

In Sarajevo, Bosnian Prime Minister Hasan Muratovic complained that Karadzic’s move did not go far enough, and a Western diplomat said the gap between Sunday’s announcement and high-pitched international demands for Karadzic’s ouster was huge.

“I don’t like these charades,” said one top-ranking official with an international organization in Sarajevo. “I want to see him [at the international war crimes tribunal] in The Hague. Nothing short of that is satisfactory.”

A Bosnian Serb source, however, said that the controversial transfer of power to Plavsic was a compromise between Bildt and the Bosnian Serb leadership. The document signed by Karadzic formalizing the deal was actually written by Bildt, the source said, even though he and others subsequently criticized it as flawed.

The document invokes a clause in the Bosnian Serb constitution that allows the temporary transfer of power to a vice president, a scenario Bildt apparently found more palatable than outright resignation. If Karadzic was to resign, according to the Bosnian Serb constitution, the resignation would have to be accepted by the Bosnian Serb parliament and new elections immediately called.

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“If he quit, the people--and the [Bosnian Serbs’] National Assembly--wouldn’t accept it,” the source said. “We would really have problems then. Right now, Plavsic can fulfill all of his duties under the constitution without any other problems.”

Among the many glitches in such a bargain, however, is Plavsic herself. Not only is the 66-year-old vice president a true follower of Karadzic, but she is well known in her own right as an extreme nationalist.

Plavsic has been dubbed the “Serb Empress” by the notorious Serbian paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznjatovic--better known as Arkan--whom she welcomed with a kiss after he led the “ethnic cleansing” of a Bosnian town in 1992. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic once described her as in need of psychiatric care, and his wife, Mirjana Markovic, likened her to Nazi death-camp doctor Josef Mengele.