Planes for Jamming Broadcasts Head for Bosnia

WASHINGTON —  The United States announced Thursday that it has dispatched to Bosnia electronic warplanes that can jam the vitriolic, anti-West radio and television broadcasts of hard-line Serbs and replace them with alternative programming.

Three Air Force EC-130 planes will reach Brindisi Air Base in Italy on Saturday, the first day of the weekend’s tense, ethnically charged municipal elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but they will not be “fully operational” until Monday, a Pentagon spokesman said.

The planes were sent to Bosnia, the spokesman said, because followers of indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic had reneged on promises to eliminate violence-inciting broadcasts and air opposition voices. The promises were made last week when U.S. troops returned a Karadzic-controlled television transmitter that they had seized.

Dispatch of the aircraft follows weeks of debate among international officials on how far to go in cracking down on the Bosnian Serb Radio and Television network, SRT, which is controlled by Karadzic from his mountain-village headquarters of Pale outside Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. And it follows a series of violent clashes between Karadzic loyalists and NATO-led forces.

Some international officials were wary of exerting censorship that interferes with freedom of speech. But repeated distortions by SRT, the officials said, were trying international patience and justifying extraordinary action.

The hard-liners have used SRT to attack NATO-led peacekeepers as an occupying force likened to the Nazi SS and to rail against Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic, who is backed by the West as she attempts to wrest power from Karadzic and his supporters. She is frequently portrayed as a puppet of Washington and referred to as a renegade and traitor.

The elite EC-130 aircraft, which were used in similar psychological operations in Haiti and Somalia, were ready to transmit “a fair and balanced report of news and information” to Bosnia, the Pentagon spokesman said.

The planes’ dispatch coincides with the sternest media warning yet to the Bosnian Serbs. U.S. Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, commander of NATO-led troops in Bosnia, and the senior civilian peacekeeper in Bosnia, Carlos Westendorp, gave Serb officials a 6 p.m. deadline today to clean up their television and radio broadcasts.

“Failure to comply,” they wrote in a letter sent late Wednesday and obtained by The Times, “will be followed by [NATO] action.”

The language served technically as a mechanism that “triggers” military action. It was addressed to Momcilo Krajisnik, a close ally of Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb member of Bosnia’s three-person presidency.

“The output of SRT has, over the last two months, been in persistent and blatant contradiction of both the spirit and letter of the peace agreement,” the letter stated.

Under the U.S.-brokered peace accords that ended Bosnia’s war 21 months ago, media are banned from inciting racial hatred and violence, and international officials enforcing the peace are authorized to penalize or censor those who break the rules.

But the Pale Serbs have repeatedly ignored warnings and violated agreements, international officials say.

Relations between the Serbs and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led forces began to sour after the July arrest of a war crimes suspect and killing of another who allegedly resisted arrest. A low-level harassment campaign began against international monitors and peacekeepers that SRT seemed to encourage.

The last straw for U.S. officials came Aug. 28, when Karadzic-controlled radio urged Serbs living in the disputed city of Brcko to attack foreigners. That call to action came in response to U.S. NATO troops’ attempts to occupy several police stations to install forces loyal to Plavsic. Two American soldiers and several Serb citizens were wounded in the day of rioting that resulted.

In the same operation, U.S. troops seized a television transmitter and cut off SRT’s signal to a northern chunk of the Republika Srpska, the Serb-controlled half of Bosnia.

But after angry Bosnian Serbs surrounded the Americans, NATO surrendered the transmitter while securing a pledge from Serbian leaders to refrain from anti-West rhetoric and give opposition voices regular air time.

The Serbs did not keep their end of that widely criticized bargain. An angry exchange of letters this week failed to get results. SRT director Miroslav Toholj refused four attempts by NATO and international officials to air programs designed to “balance” SRT coverage.

NATO officials had resisted forceful action against Bosnian Serb broadcasters, such as occupation of SRT studios, fearing danger to their troops.

This weekend’s much-postponed municipal elections, which are regarded by Washington as a key step in rebuilding the country’s postwar institutions, have been threatened by boycotts by both the Serbs and the Bosnian Croats.

Feverish negotiations Thursday in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, persuaded the Bosnian Croats to participate in the vote. Zagreb had come under pointed criticism from the U.S. State Department for its role in promoting the boycott.

Meanwhile, the Bosnian Serbs, under the lead of Karadzic’s ruling Serbian Democratic Party, reneged on their boycott threat after obtaining a number of concessions from international election organizers.

Wilkinson reported from Sarajevo and Meisler from Washington.