New Bosnian Serb Regime Draws Praise, Barbs

Western officials Sunday praised the creation of a new Bosnian Serb government, rid of many of its war-era hard-liners, for being the long-awaited breakthrough in a crisis that has paralyzed efforts to rebuild this country.

But the new government immediately faced powerful opposition from rival politicians who charged that they were victims of a veritable coup and who warned of bloodshed.

NATO and U.N. peacekeeping forces braced for trouble as international mediators nervously awaited further reaction from hard-liners loyal to war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic who were ousted early Sunday in a marathon, turbulent parliament session that mirrored deep divisions within the Bosnian Serb leadership.

In the end, the U.S.-backed president, Biljana Plavsic, prevailed over her rivals--but only by a hair and only after Karadzic supporters, who form nearly half the parliament, stormed out.

The new government marks the first time since the Serbs declared their independence in early 1992--helping to trigger a 3 1/2-year war--that Karadzic’s Serbian Democratic Party, or SDS, has been out of office.

Finally, senior diplomats were saying Sunday, we have a government we can work with.

But will this government, composed of a prime minister and a 20-member Cabinet, be able to exercise the authority it needs to overcome stiff resistance from the Karadzic faction?

“This is a historical crossroad,” German diplomat Hanns Schumacher, one of the principal international peace mediators in Bosnia, said in an interview. “They [the hard-liners] will certainly not cooperate, but to what extent will they be obstructionist? It is an open question.”

The hard-liners swiftly rejected the new Cabinet as illegitimate, especially since its victory hinged on votes from Muslim and Croatian members of the parliament. Ousted Foreign Minister Aleksa Buha denounced “a kind of coup d’etat.”

Sunday’s events mean that the bitter rift within the Bosnian Serb leadership has only deepened along an east-west divide, with Karadzic’s supporters based in Pale, their wartime capital just southeast of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital, and the Plavsic faction controlling the city of Banja Luka in the northwest.

If allowed to function, however, the new Cabinet under the direction of a moderate reformer, Milorad Dodik, will mark a sea change in the leadership of the Republika Srpska, the Serb-run half of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Dodik, whose Independent Social Democratic Party holds only two seats in the parliament, is a longtime opponent of the Karadzic wing. In a speech overnight, he seemed to touch on every taboo, calling for an apolitical police force and an end to corruption and for the Orthodox Church to stay out of politics.

He named to the most sensitive Cabinet post--the interior minister, who controls police and security services--a Socialist and former army officer, Milovan Stankovic, who ran an opposition newspaper and was jailed just a few months ago for anti-Karadzic activities.

And Dodik pledged to move the Bosnian Serbs’ capital from Pale to Banja Luka, which is their largest city. International officials said they were worried that the Pale leaders, to resist such a transfer, would attempt to burn archives, destroy ministry equipment and cut off money that pays civil servants’ salaries. Late Sunday, NATO-led troops were reported to be surrounding key government buildings in Pale and the northeastern Bosnian Serb city of Bijeljina.

The United States has poured millions of dollars into a campaign to bolster Plavsic in her struggle to wrest power from Karadzic, whom she has accused of enriching himself at the expense of an impoverished people. She dissolved parliament in July and with North Atlantic Treaty Organization assistance has taken control of police stations and television transmitters in her portion of the Republika Srpska.

U.S. and European officials have accused the Pale faction of blocking democratic reforms and the return of refugees--both pillars of U.S.-brokered peace accords that ended the war in Bosnia in December 1995. The U.S. goal also is to marginalize Karadzic, who continues to exercise considerable influence in the region despite two U.N. war crimes indictments against him.

His influence was seen, for example, in an attack Friday on international envoys attempting to install newly elected Muslim city officials in the town of Srebrenica, where thousands of Muslims are believed to have been rounded up and killed by conquering Serbs in July 1995. The Muslim members of the City Council were elected in September by refugee voters but have not been able to take their posts.

For Plavsic’s government to survive, mediators said they will have to immediately free up financial aid. Most money has been denied to the Republika Srpska because of its failure to fulfill the peace accords. Carlos Westendorp, the senior diplomat in charge of executing the peace agreement, rushed off to Brussels to meet with European Union officials on disbursing aid.

The Bosnian Serbs “now have a functioning government and one that is keen to cooperate,” Westendorp’s spokesman, Duncan Bullivant, said. “That cooperation will be rewarded.”

The 13-hour parliament session that produced the Dodik government, held in Bijeljina under heavy NATO guard, was full of drama and intrigue. Hard-liners railed against Plavsic and Dodik in speech after speech, accusing the pair of betraying their people and acquiescing to a foreign occupation force, until the pro-Karadzic president of the parliament abruptly adjourned the meeting at midnight. All SDS legislators and their allies, the Radicals, left the scene.

But Plavsic forces regrouped, decided the session had been adjourned improperly, counted heads and calculated that they were one short of the votes needed to approve a new government.

The single vote was a Croatian legislator who had already been whisked away from the session by his international security escort. (Minority officials are given escorts for their safety.) The security detail was contacted by radio and told to return. The Croatian legislator resumed his seat, and, about 2:30 a.m., Dodik and his team were approved on a 42-0 vote. They needed exactly 42 votes in the 83-member parliament.