Ouster Of Mladic Welcomed

The dismissal of Gen. Ratko Mladic, who has been indicted for war crimes, as leader of the Bosnian Serb army won support from Western officials Saturday.

But foreign diplomats and Bosnian Serb officials warned that it was still unclear whether the Bosnian Serb president, Biljana Plavsic, who announced the general’s dismissal Friday night, would succeed in asserting control over the army.

Late Saturday the man named to replace Mladic, Pero Colic, who was a major during the war but has since been promoted to major general, said he fully supported the peace agreement reached last year, which calls for a unified Bosnia.

There was no public reaction from Mladic to Plavsic’s dismissal order. U.N. officials said he was thought to be meeting with other senior officers.

And diplomats said the question of who really controlled the Bosnian Serb military had yet to be decided.

Plavsic, a member of the inner circle of political leaders throughout the war who was elected president of the semiautonomous Serb Republic in September, has also announced a complete reorganization of the top military leadership.

Although this move, if successful, would further extend her control of the military, she may also have given military leaders more reason to support Mladic should he resist her order to step aside.

“We’ve seen this same thing fail in the past with the Serb politicians - all it did was make them look weak and the army look strong,” said a European diplomat.

Diplomats said Plavsic had become upset with the fact that almost all senior officers in the Bosnian Serb forces are from the Yugoslav army and are still paid by Yugoslavia. “She believes, and rightly so, that if they’re on someone else’s payroll, they are taking orders from someone else,” a Western official said.