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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Bosnian Serb Hard-Liners Defy Nato, Take Over TV Broadcasts

Tracy Wilkinson Los Angeles Times

In brazen defiance of the United States and its allies, Bosnian Serb hard-liners circumvented NATO Thursday and sneaked onto the airwaves with a night of television broadcasts attacking the West’s efforts to silence them.

It was the first time Bosnian Serbs loyal to indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic have managed to retake the airwaves since NATO troops seized transmitters Oct. 1 and turned television and radio over to Western-backed Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic.

The West had accused Karadzic-controlled television of “poisonous” rhetoric that incited violence against NATO and foreign officials and undermined the U.S.-led peace process in Bosnia.

International officials who monitor the media were at a loss Thursday night to explain how Karadzic supporters were able to transmit their programming, which blasted the Western “evil empire” for its “undemocratic” policies. NATO soldiers were searching for the source of the transmission.

The hard-liners may have used small transmitters scattered around Pale, their headquarters village nine miles southeast of the capital, Sarajevo, in a guerrilla-style broadcasting operation that knocked Plavsic’s signal off the air in many parts of the Bosnian Serb half of the country, an international official said.

“It was a very clever, … elaborate operation,” said the official, vowing that NATO would eliminate the broadcasts today.

Bosnian Serbs in Pale, locked in a power struggle with Plavsic, her supporters and the West, were triumphant.

“Real Serb TV is back on the air!” gloated Jovan Zametica, a senior adviser to Karadzic. “It is back to business as usual. We cannot allow just one voice, the voice of Biljana Plavsic.”

The stunning operation came as the world’s major powers, the so-called Contact Group on Bosnian peacemaking, gathered in Rome precisely to discuss the media. How to control Pale’s broadcasts and how to transform those of the Plavsic faction into professional journalism are issues that have consumed international mediators and have caused often bitter debate.