Search for Serbian war-crimes suspect brings firings

BELGRADE, Serbia and Montenegro – In an effort to tighten the noose around fugitive war-crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, the international administrator of Bosnia-Herzegovina on Wednesday fired 60 Bosnian Serb politicians and other officials for failing to arrest their onetime leader.

But Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted men, continued to elude capture, as he has for nearly a decade.

Paddy Ashdown, the international envoy in charge of postwar Bosnia, took the unusual punitive step of firing a raft of “corrupt politicians and criminals” who he said have controlled Bosnian Serbs for too long and created a “climate of secrecy and impunity” that allows war-crimes suspects to roam free. Those dismissed included top officials such as Dragan Kalinic, the speaker of the Bosnian Serb parliament and leader of the Serbian Democratic Party, which Karadzic founded.

Kalinic scoffed at the action, announced by Ashdown at a news conference in Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital.

“Many are powerless when faced with the fact that Radovan Karadzic is guarded by God and the angels,” Kalinic said.

Karadzic led the Bosnian Serbs through 3 1/2 years of war, part of the conflict that ripped apart the former Yugoslav federation, leaving more than a quarter of a million people dead in Bosnia, most of them Muslims. It was Europe’s deadliest strife since World War II. The international war crimes tribunal in The Hague has indicted Karadzic and his top general, Ratko Mladic, on charges of genocide.

Both have remained at large, helped by hard-line nationalists to whom they are heroes.

On Tuesday, the lead Hague prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, said at the United Nations that she was confident Karadzic would be arrested soon.

The steps taken Wednesday were aimed at substantially reducing Karadzic’s ability to maneuver and hide by crippling his support network. In addition to sacking politicians, mayors, police officers and the Bosnian Serb entity’s interior minister, Ashdown slapped travel bans on many of the same people, withheld more than $500,000 from Kalinic’s party and announced an overhaul of the Bosnian Serb police force, which has not arrested a single war crimes suspect despite an obligation under peace accords to do so.

“The Republika Srpska has been in the grip of a small band of corrupt politicians and criminals for far too long,” Ashdown said.

Republika Srpska is one of the autonomous halves that make up Bosnia. Neighboring Serbia and Montenegro, the two-republic nation that represents what is left of Yugoslavia, face increased pressure to arrest suspected war criminals. Failure to do so is costing the two Balkan countries in closer economic and security ties with Europe, diplomats say.