With Gifts and Bullying, West Seeks to Shape Bosnia Vote

With elections a few days away, Bosnia’s international overlords gave this war-battered town a $1-million water-supply system this week. Then they got rid of the mayor.

Schoolchildren who had gathered to sing thanks for the gift giggled as U.S. Ambassador Richard Kauzlarich mused that the 53,000-gallon storage tower looked like a giant ice cream cone.

“To grow up strong and healthy, you need clean water, so the people of the United States provided the money that made this possible,” the ambassador told those assembled, giving equal credit to Kresimir Zubak, the politician who had lobbied for the project and stood beaming at his side.

Struggling to enforce Bosnia’s peace accords, the United States and its Western allies have organized this weekend’s nationwide vote and tried, with beneficence and bullying, to sway the outcome. They hope that moderates such as Zubak will unseat the entrenched Croatian, Muslim and Serbian nationalists who resist the mandate of rebuilding Bosnia-Herzegovina as a multiethnic state.

Two days after the ceremony for the shiny new water tower, Orasje’s municipal landscape changed again: Mayor Marko Benkovic, who had intimidated supporters of Zubak’s new party, resigned Thursday at the insistence of Carlos Westendorp, the senior Western diplomat overseeing the peace accords.

In addition, the mayor and 14 other candidates of the nationalist Croatian Democratic Union were removed from the ballot for what Western election supervisors deemed unfair practices--biased coverage aired in Bosnia by neighboring Croatia’s state television and politicking by ethnic Croat army soldiers.

Change in Power Not a Sure Bet

Despite such intervention, the voting today and Sunday may not break the hard-line party’s control of this town or achieve more than a slight softening of the country’s inter-ethnic confrontation, according to Western diplomats, Bosnian officials and independent monitors.

Bosnia’s 2.7 million voters are choosing members of a three-member presidency, with one representative from each ethnic group. They are also electing deputies to the national parliament and to assemblies of the two autonomous regions of postwar Bosnia--the Serbs’ Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation--as well as a president in the Serb entity.

The elections are the fifth in Bosnia since the November 1995 accords signed in Dayton, Ohio, halted 43 months of ethnic warfare.

Still largely unfulfilled, the accords call for multiethnic governance, freedom for war refugees to go home to communities that had been “ethnically cleansed” and the surrender of indicted war crimes suspects. Bosnia’s squabbling ethnic fiefdoms have the trappings of a state--a single flag, currency, passport and license plate--only because Westendorp, a Spanish diplomat, has imposed them.

Looking to withdraw 35,000 international troops that keep a costly peace, the West is spending to help candidates who are the most supportive of the accords. Officials, including U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, have crisscrossed Bosnia inaugurating public works for cooperative local leaders and preaching that “Dayton pays.”

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is overseeing the elections to offset every edge held by extreme nationalists. More than two dozen hard-liners have been knocked off the ballot for campaign violations, including two Serbs whose posters pictured Radovan Karadzic, the wartime Bosnian Serb leader and war crimes suspect.

Campaign coverage by Bosnia’s two television networks, seized from hard-line Serbian and Muslim party control, is closely supervised by OSCE officials, who have enforced equal-time rules and barred ethnic conflict as a theme of debate over the airwaves.

“We have every indication that moderation is the keyword now in Bosnia,” Westendorp told reporters this week. But he added: “A war and a situation of ethnic confrontation cannot be overcome in two or three or four years’ time. It needs a generation.”

Serbian Nationalists’ Decline Anticipated

Observers say the voting is likely to confirm the decline of Serbian nationalists still behind Karadzic and ratify the pro-Dayton line of Biljana Plavsic, who broke with Karadzic last year after succeeding him as president of Republika Srpska.

Buoyed by $70 million in U.S. aid, Plavsic is seeking reelection, and her governing Unity coalition is trying to expand its narrow hold on the Serbian assembly.

Western officials also support Zivko Radisic, a Plavsic ally who faces a tougher race against Karadzic’s right-hand man, incumbent Momcilo Krajisnik, for the Serbian seat on the three-person presidency.

In the Muslim-Croat Federation, hard-liner Alija Izetbegovic faces no serious opposition in his bid for reelection as the Muslim member of the presidency. His Democratic Action Party and the Croatian Democratic Union are expected to dominate their respective ethnic blocs of the regional and national assemblies.

But both ultranationalist parties, in power since before the war, face stronger opposition than before.

The Croatian Democratic Union’s challenge comes from a breakaway party led by Zubak, a moderate nationalist who is the Croatian member of Bosnia’s presidency. His belief that refugees, including Croats, should return to their hometowns throughout Bosnia puts him at odds with his former party. The Croatian Democratic Union is seeking to build up a separatist stronghold in the west of the country--with the aim of merging it with neighboring Croatia.

Zubak’s “one Bosnia” message has appeal in this ethnic Croat enclave of 26,000 people in northeastern Bosnia, which Croatian President Franjo Tudjman once offered to cede to Serbia. Speaking at the water tower, the candidate drew applause from townspeople by saying that such improvements can only “encourage you to stay here and give hope to those who long to come home.”

“Clean water means life for us, and that can only help make Bosnia-Herzegovina one country,” said Mato Zivkovic, a 43-year-old teacher at the ceremony, who noted that residents have been getting sick for years on contaminated well water.

Soldiers Tear Down Moderate’s Posters

Reacting furiously, the Croatian Democratic Union has mobilized soldiers to tear down Zubak’s posters. Zubak followers, from mayors on down, say they have been summoned by party leaders and threatened with the loss of their government jobs or contracts. Rumors are spreading that Croatia, which supports thousands of Bosnian Croat soldiers and war veterans, will cut off pay and pensions if Zubak wins reelection.

Croatian nationalists are stunned by the split in their party and the international support for Zubak’s faction, which mirrors the fatal wedge that opened in Karadzic’s once-monolithic Serbian party 14 months ago.

“I regret that such a thing can happen in Europe, against a Croatian people who have suffered so much,” said Zvonimir Janecak, a retired clinical psychologist. “It is difficult to understand.”

‘The Fear Factor . . . Is Very Real’

Zubak, a 50-year-old lawyer, stands a chance of beating Ante Jelavic, his Croatian Democratic Union rival. But in parliamentary elections, his New Croatia Initiative can expect only modest gains against the party it broke from just three months ago.

For all their bullying, Western officials may have done little real damage to the Croatian Democratic Union. Most of its 15 disqualified candidates have been replaced on the ballot by reserves on the party list, and the ousted mayor switched jobs with Orasje’s party boss.

The party is “scared of international pressure,” said one Western official, who conceded that many Croats are even more afraid of the party. “The fear factor in small towns and villages is very real. These people are so easily intimidated. It can be done with the look of an eye.”