Gis Give Up Bosnian TV Station Nato Backs Down After Serbs Surround Transmitter
Surrounded by stick-wielding Bosnian Serbs, U.S. troops agreed Tuesday to relinquish a television transmitter they had controlled to forces answering to war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.
In exchange, the Serbs, under the direction of Karadzic ally Momcilo Krajisnik, promised to end inflammatory anti-West rhetoric and permit opposition voices on the air.
Krajisnik, the Bosnian Serb member of the country’s three-man presidency, praised the deal as a “wise” step by NATO peacekeepers to avoid conflict with the Serbs. Others wondered if the Americans had blinked, having been embarrassed by last week’s bungling of a military operation to take over pro-Karadzic police stations.
Adding insult to injury, the newly restored television transmission was used Tuesday night to cancel Serbian participation in crucial municipal elections scheduled for Sept. 13-14.
The transmitter, on a hilltop in northeastern Bosnia, was seized by American troops last week as part of a campaign to shore up Karadzic foe Biljana Plavsic, president of the Bosnian Serb Republic. But the troops soon became targets of about 200 angry, stone-hurling Serbs.
Media and police are the two central tools in the battle to gain and hold onto power in this part of the world. Last week, U.S.-led NATO troops attempted to install Plavsic forces in police stations in three cities and two towns, and to take the transmitter at Udrigovo, near the city of Bijeljina.
In all three cities, the operation failed and police loyal to Karadzic and his hard-line coterie remained in charge; in one city, Brcko, angry crowds blocked and attacked American forces in an ugly melee broadcast the world over. And with Tuesday’s agreement, the transmitter also reverted to Karadzic’s allies.
From his village stronghold in Pale near Sarajevo, Karadzic, indicted by an international war crimes court on genocide charges, is locked in a power struggle with his one-time partner, Plavsic. She accuses him and his inner circle of corruption and of enriching themselves while most Bosnian Serbs languish in poverty.
For the last several months, the Clinton administration has pursued a more aggressive course of action in Bosnia, signaling a determination to isolate Karadzic by promoting Plavsic. But in the last week, faced with their first military challenge, U.S. efforts have crashed - with negative consequences on military, diplomatic and political fronts.
Plavsic, after making important gains in the northwestern portion of the Bosnian Serb Republic, has lost momentum and stalled. The American military has appeared weak to the Serbs, making future confrontations more likely.
And an always precarious unity within the international peacemaking mission here has been shattered. European and other international allies said the United States is forcing its agenda through with little laying of political groundwork and with disregard for legal backing.
The Udrigovo transmitter was crucial because it controlled television signals to key, disputed cities. With the U.S. takeover of the tower last Thursday, hateful rhetoric that Bosnian Serb hard-liners were using to incite violence against Western peacekeepers could not reach those cities.
On Monday, crowds of Bosnian Serbs, bused in and directed by men with walkie-talkies, began surrounding the heavily armed U.S. troops, who encircled the transmitter and built barricades. The mobs, which swelled to around 250 people, hurled stones until the troops fired tear gas.
Still armed with sticks and wooden clubs, and consuming plenty of plum brandy, the Serbs staged a kind of sitin around the Americans overnight and well into Tuesday morning. They finally dispersed later Tuesday, NATO spokesmen said, after troops permitted four Bosnian Serb policemen and three technicians from Pale television to enter the transmitting station.
On Tuesday night, the signal from Pale television was again on the air in cities like Brcko and Bijeljina, which Plavsic and Karadzic forces continue to dispute.