NATO Seizes Bosnia City’s Police Posts

In a new widening of the role of U.S.-led peacekeepers in Bosnia, NATO seized control of this city’s entire police structure Wednesday and installed a police chief loyal to embattled Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic.

Clearly taking sides in an explosive crisis that is splitting the Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb half of Bosnia-Herzegovina, U.S. and European mediators also moved to help Plavsic hold early elections to replace a parliament that opposes her.

At dawn, with their helicopters flying overhead, mostly British NATO troops occupied police headquarters, a training academy and three stations here in the Bosnian Serbs’ largest city. Police who support Plavsic’s rival, war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, were ejected from their offices by the troops and United Nations investigators who said they then uncovered a 12-ton cache of weapons.

Plavsic said her enemies were plotting to use the weapons, including rocket launchers and new assault rifles, to overthrow her in a coup, but Karadzic’s supporters charged that it was Plavsic who had staged a coup--with NATO’s assistance.

The daylong military operation, which Washington’s special envoy to Bosnia said revealed police involvement in extensive eavesdropping, intimidation and other criminal activity, left many Bosnian Serbs stunned and wondering what international peacekeepers would do next.

Indeed, after months of lethargy and stalemate, the West is taking steps into uncharted territory in a newly revived, U.S.-spurred determination to push the peace process ahead. Until recently, officials of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization had steadily refused to interfere with the notorious Bosnian Serb paramilitary police.

Wednesday’s raids came as the Clinton administration’s point man on Bosnia, Robert Gelbard, made his second trip here in as many weeks. In a news conference late Wednesday in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, Gelbard declined to rule out additional operations elsewhere.

For now, keeping hard-liners off balance seems to be the preferred strategy for marginalizing Karadzic, rather than attempting a perilous arrest mission. But the current strategy is also risky.

Bosnian Serb television, still controlled by Karadzic’s allies, blasted Plavsic as a “renegade president” whom it likened to “the worst quislings of World War II.” Peacekeepers were compared with Nazi occupiers.

“These events in Banja Luka are a declaration of war against the Serbian people west of the Drina River,” said a harsh-toned proclamation from the Bosnian Serb government, referring to Bosnia’s border with the rump Yugoslavia.

Momcilo Krajisnik, the Bosnian Serb member of Bosnia’s three-man presidency and a close ally of Karadzic, sought to rally the Bosnian Serb army against Plavsic in response to the police takeover, a Western official said. But the army refused to cooperate, the official said.

“The acts of the president are illegal and unconstitutional,” Krajisnik said after a meeting of the ruling Serbian Democratic Party in its Banja Luka headquarters--under a large portrait of Karadzic. “This is part of a dangerous plan to weaken and divide the Bosnian Serb Republic. . . . The republic must remain as one.”

Wednesday’s military operation followed a shorter raid Sunday that yielded an extremely sophisticated eavesdropping system capable of recording 60 conversations at once, Western officials said. More than 500 tapes and evidence connected to the recent intimidation and beating of a pro-Plavsic judge were also confiscated, the officials said.

The material may be turned over to an international war crimes court in The Hague, a senior Western official said.

As the power struggle between Plavsic and the Karadzic faction deepens, NATO finds itself with the unexpected duty of preventing Serbs from fighting Serbs. From his base in the southeastern Bosnian village of Pale, Krajisnik dispatched scores of regular and secret police to Banja Luka on Monday, but they did not confront NATO.

There appears to be little legal backing for what Plavsic is doing. Appointing police chiefs is not within her purview, for example. But Washington and its European allies have chosen to support Plavsic, despite her own ultranationalist philosophy, and Western officials say the December 1995 peace accords that ended Bosnia’s brutal war are sufficient to give her legal support.

One senior Western official said it is important to avoid getting “tied up in micro-think about legalisms” and to instead give solid support to Plavsic because she is at least willing to cooperate with peacemakers.

On Wednesday, about six hours after NATO secured the police buildings, a police chief loyal to Plavsic, Milan Sutilovic, assumed duty in a brief meeting with Plavsic. Just 24 hours earlier, the Karadzic police had arrested Sutilovic.

“Justice is on our side,” Plavsic proclaimed. Crowds milled outside police headquarters, eyeing the British armored personnel carriers and heavily armed troops. Some applauded the president, while a few shouted, “Traitor!” and “We’ll bomb you!”

Bosnian Serb radio also launched an attack on the men Plavsic named as her new police leadership, using the insults it favors. The “dark spots” on Sutilovic’s record, the radio said, included the fact that his mother was not a Serb but a Croat. Another officer was branded “a known protector of Muslims and Croats.”

Western officials also support Plavsic’s plan to hold elections Oct. 12 to replace a Karadzic-controlled parliament she attempted to dissolve. Because the ruling party will refuse to cooperate, Plavsic will need the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, to run the elections.

But within the OSCE, Russian officials, traditional allies of the Serbs, are resisting, diplomats say. On Wednesday, Gelbard met with Russian officials in Vienna, where the OSCE is based, to attempt to bring them on board. No agreement was reached, and more talks are scheduled for today in Vienna.