Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has once again played the international community for a fool. Karadzic handed a document to international mediator Carl Bildt purporting to accede to the international community’s demand that he relinquish all power. The document was a purported resignation as president of Srpska, the Serbs’ self-proclaimed state in Bosnia, and the transfer of power to his deputy, Biljana Plavsic. Aside from the fact that Ms Plavsic is as hardline as Karadzic himself, the document was riddled with holes and enabled Ms Plavsic to virtually disown it by saying that Mr Karadzic cannot stop being president until elections in September.
It is an humiliation for Mr Bildt who accepted the document a proof that Karadzic had relinquished power and publicly announced that Karadzic had stepped aside. The essential point is that Karadzic has been twice indicted for war crimes. The international position, therefore, must be that he cannot be dealt with as a national leader until that indictment has been answered. This is as important for the settlement of the Bosnian crisis and even more important for the long-term credibility of the international war crimes tribunal.
Mr Bildt tried to put on a brave face. He said the Karadzic was “”losing one little battle after another. He pops his head up, he gets hit and he ducks down again but there can be no doubt that he is on his way out.” That sentiment has been expressed by western and international leaders for some time. A more realistic appraisal of the situation is that Karadzic will not be removed from power and influence unless force is applied to him personally. Mr Bildt’s threat of sanctions against both Serbian-held parts of Bosnia and the Serb Republic unless Karadzic stands down appears to hold little water as far as the Bosnian Serbs are concerned.
Under the Dayton peace accord for Bosnia, Karadzic is supposed to relinquish public office and surrender to the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague. Instead, the Bosnian Serb SDS party re-elected him as party leader on Saturday. So the offer for him to relinquish power as president and only keep the title “”president” until election in September is meaningless. As, indeed, would be an offer to step down from the presidency altogether. As party leader he can still influence and probably direct all of Bosnian Serb policy. The only thing acceptable to the international community would be for Karadzic to be in The Hague answering his war crimes indictment.
Major Western powers have said that that is precisely their policy. A White House spokesman said, “”Our policy on him remains what we have said in the past: that he needs to be not only out of power but he needs to be out of influence, out of town and in the dock.” And Britain, France and Germany echoed the US calls.
But these are just words. NATO has enough troops in Bosnia to arrest Karadzic and take him to The Hague. That is what they should do. Imposing sanctions will not move Karadzic; all it will do is impose hardship on the citizenry … once again … while Karadzic himself lives in comparative comfort.
NATO or UN troops should effect the arrest to give force to the underlying principle behind the setting up of the war-crimes tribunal: to act as a deterrent against future aggression and to impose personal criminal and moral responsibility on individuals who engage in violence that transcends all war zones and all borders.