U.S.-Backed Serbian Leader Concedes Defeat to Hard-Liner

In a serious setback to U.S. efforts to build a lasting peace in Bosnia, moderate nationalist Serb leader Biljana Plavsic on Monday conceded defeat to a hard-liner in this month’s elections.

The United States and other Western powers openly promoted Plavsic as the best alternative to more strident Serbian nationalists allied with indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.

Candidates who stepped out of line during the campaign were simply disqualified from the elections supervised by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The organization disqualified nine Bosnian Serb candidates Monday, but Nikola Poplasen, Plavsic’s likely successor as president of the Serbian republic within Bosnia-Herzegovina, survived.

Plavsic, a former hard-liner herself, said she hasn’t given up on democracy or her struggle to lead Bosnian Serbs, who call their territory Republika Srpska, out of isolation.

“We are the ones who opened Republika Srpska to the rest of the world,” she told reporters Sunday in her former stronghold, Banja Luka. “It would be absurd for whoever wins this election to close that door.”

The final results of the Sept. 12-13 national elections, which were contested by 58 parties, aren’t expected until Wednesday at the earliest.

But early indications are that Plavsic wasn’t the only moderate to fall when Bosnians cast ballots in a complex election for regional and national assemblies and a three-person presidency.

By giving new life to hard-liners opposed to a multiethnic Bosnia, Plavsic’s defeat probably will make compromises on the disputes still threatening peace more difficult.

The most pressing issue is the promise enshrined in the 1995 Dayton peace accords that “ethnic cleansing” would be reversed and that Bosnian refugees forced from their homes could return.

An estimated 1 million Bosnians were displaced within Bosnia during the 3 1/2-year war, and another 1 million fled the country.

So far, only about 150,000 of the latter have been allowed to return to their homes. Most of those live in areas where they are part of the ethnic majority, according to U.N. figures.

Before the elections, Western governments channeled millions of dollars in aid to regions where moderate politicians had the strongest support, in the hope that voters from the three main ethnic groups would turn against hard-liners.

The aid also was part of a strategy to give democracy a firmer foothold and make it easier for foreign troops, including about 7,000 from the U.S., to pull out.

the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, underlining the significance to the Westerm peace efforts of Plavsic’s loss, warned Americans to avoid unnecessary travel to Serb-held areas. The “emotional tone of the political rhetoric” is mounting there and “may serve to heighten tensions in the region,” the travel advisory said.

Despite Plavsic’s defeat, Western diplomats still are holding out hope for at least one big victory in their campaign to sideline Serbian nationalists.

They say Momcilo Krajisnik, a close ally of Karadzic, may lose his seat in the Bosnian presidency, which sets aside one spot each for a Muslim, Croat and Serb.

If Poplasen is confirmed as Plavsic’s replacement, he could spite the foreign strategists by naming Krajisnik as his prime minister.