BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Washington escalated its war preparations in Bosnia, when NATO troops killed one Serb and seized another man July 10 during two coordinated military assaults in the town of Prijedor. An unnamed military official said NATO warplanes were prepared to launch air strikes against a range of targets if they met stiff resistance, according to the July 19 Washington Post.

The two NATO operations were organized to arrest the men, who didn't know they were being sought. They were named in secret indictments in March for alleged war crimes. Officials of the imperialist "war crimes tribunal" in the Hague, Netherlands, refuse to say how many others in Bosnia may be indicted secretly. The tribunal sentenced Dusan Tadic, a Bosnian Serb, to 20 years in prison July 14 for alleged participation in an "ethnic cleansing" campaign against Muslim civilians in 1992.

The NATO attacks provoked outrage among many Bosnian Serbs and some have begun to organize retaliatory measures against the U.S and British occupation forces.

With the approval of their prime minister Anthony Blair, British government officials who planned the operation said the raids "were the first ones, but not the last ones." The "snatch force," backed by U.S. helicopters and logistical support, was given the OK by U.S. president William Clinton on July 5. "Our mandate is to arrest people who have been accused of war crimes and turn them over for trial," Clinton said at a July 9 news conference in Madrid, on the eve of the NATO summit there that extended invitations to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to join the Atlantic imperialist alliance.

NATO secretary general Javier Solana authorized the military operation three months earlier. The assault was carried out by crack troops from the British Special Air Service (SAS), who spent most of June rehearsing before flying to Bosnia from Britain. London has 5,300 soldiers occupying parts of Bosnia, the second largest imperialist military force deployed there, after Washington's 8,500 GIs.

Simo Drljaca, a former police chief, was shot by the NATO soldiers who claimed "self defense" when they fired. The other man, Milan Kovacevic, director of a hospital in Prijedor, was seized by the SAS team that approached the hospital disguised as a Red Cross unit. Kovacevic was whisked off to the tribunal in the Hague. Former mayor of Vukovar, Slavko Dokmanovic, a Croatian, was also apprehended a few days earlier in a surprise arrest.

In response to these assaults, Serbs in Bosnia have waged small-scale guerrilla attacks against NATO forces. At least eight retaliatory explosions have been reported so far. On July 16 four grenades were thrown at the British military base in Banja Luka. Three of them exploded without injuring anyone. That same day, someone stabbed a U.S. soldier with a garden-sized sickle. Another grenade exploded July 19 at a NATO compound in Mrkonjic Grad, damaging two military vehicles.

U.S. officials have demanded from the Bosnian Serb leadership to halt this resistance. These attacks are "intolerable and if not ended, could pull us down an extremely dangerous road," warned U.S. ambassador to the United Nations William Richardson. U.S. Gen. William Crouch, commander of NATO's "Stabilization Force" said the military alliance will "not be deterred from carrying out its mission."

Manhunt to catch the `big fish'
NATO officials claim no decision has been made yet to mandate the occupation forces to track down alleged war criminals. At the same time, the capitalist media and most bourgeois politicians are united in a campaign to win support for initiating a military manhunt for chauvinist Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and former military chief Gen. Ratko Mladic. "Warfare spawns brutality," warned the July 19 Economist, but "despite the risks of casualties, NATO should not flinch from trying to seize him [Karadzic] at the right moment."

An article in the July 12 New York Times headlined "Now, NATO troops should catch the big fish," former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt called for "coordinated military and political" operations to "arrest the most important people indicted for war crimes." Bildt, who was appointed as the civilian representative to oversee implementation of the U.S.-crafted Dayton accords that partitioned Bosnia and paved the way for the NATO invasion, said the NATO mission will not end by June 30, 1998, the deadline the Clinton administration has set for withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Echoing Bildt's belligerence, Richard Holbrooke, chief strategist of the Dayton accord, boasted, "The truth is, the Bosnian Serbs are rightly afraid of NATO. NATO should not fear them." He stressed that the "troops must be used more vigorously" if the soldiers are to be withdrawn from Bosnia before the 1998 "arbitrary deadline."

Clinton left open the option of keeping U.S. troops in Yugoslavia beyond the announced deadline. "I believe the present operation will have run its course by then and we'll have to discuss what, if any, involvement the United States should have there." White House aides have stated the president will veto any bill from Congress mandating a withdrawal date.

Meanwhile, U.S. government officials are pressing other NATO forces to launch military attacks and have indicated more arrests are being planned. "We will continue to look for other ways" to capture "indicted war criminals," declared Robert Gelbard, chief U.S. diplomat for Bosnia.

Washington chided Paris for its queasiness while preparing a second raid in Bosnia. An article in the July 16 New York Times, titled "France said to balk at 2d Bosnia raid, calling it too risky," quoted unnamed U.S. officials saying about the French military, "They have gone back and forth," about executing operations in the section of Bosnia supposedly under their control. In planning discussions over this raid, French officers reportedly "pulled back from their readiness to be an active participant."

"It is a vicious and completely unfounded rumor that France made a decision to pull out of an operation," sneered a French diplomat, revealing once again the widening conflict between Paris and Washington. "France is an originator of the International Tribunal at the Hague."

As part of their preparations to overturn non-capitalist property relations in Yugoslavia, the imperialist forces have thrown "cautious support" behind Biljana Plavsic, president of the so-called Serb Bosnia. She was expelled from the ruling Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) July 20. Plavsic has publicly assailed Karadzic and Momcilo Krajisnik, the Serb member of Bosnia's collective presidency, for corruption. Herself a chauvinist leader of the SDS for some time, Plavsic has denounced Slobodan Milosevic - the former president of Serbia who was recently inaugurated as president of Yugoslavia - as the leading force behind the nationalist tirades his regime used to justify the launching of the war.

NATO officials "are aware Mrs. Plavsic remains a staunch Serb nationalist," said London's Financial Times, but they "tend to characterize her as the lesser evil." British foreign secretary Robin Cook is scheduled to meet with Plavsic during a trip to Bosnia during at the end of July.  
 
 
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