BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
The NATO occupation force in Bosnia extended the scope of its military aggression a bit further when two Belgrade- backed Serb officers, Gen. Djordje Djukic and Col. Aleksa Krsmanovic, were taken handcuffed from a prison in Sarajevo and flown in a U.S. C-130 cargo plane to the United Nations war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands February 12.
Djukic, a close aide to chauvinist Serb general Ratko Mladic, and Krsmanovic, along with nine other military men, were apprehended by Bosnian government officials between January 20 and February 2. Four of the soldiers were released February 10 and five more were freed February 12 because they were not on the tribunal's wanted list.
NATO secretary general Javier Solana called the transfer operation a "further indication of NATO's active support for the work of the International War Crimes Tribunal." Tribunal spokesman Christian Chartier said no charges have been filed against the two officers, but the tribunal claims the right to hold them indefinitely. "This is a continuing investigation," he asserted.
In response to the arrests Mladic ordered his forces to sever all contacts with the NATO occupation force in Bosnia February 8 until the officers and the soldiers were released. Radovan Karadzic, the other principal leader of the pro- Belgrade forces in Bosnia, reversed the command the next day. Serb leaders said although they would continue to cooperate with the NATO military force, they would only meet with such officials on territory under their control. Chauvinist Serb military officers have continued to uphold the ban, however.
NATO military officials previously hinted that the 60,000 soldiers under their command in Bosnia would not seek to detain any of the 52 people indicted by the tribunal for alleged war crimes. Both Karadzic and Mladic have been indicted by the imperialist-crafted tribunal.
"IFOR [NATO implementation force] troops have the authority, but not the obligation, to detain indicted war criminals," Lieut. Col. Mark Rayner, a NATO spokesman, said February 12. Rayner said NATO soldiers would not be "searching for them or tracking them down."
But in face of the defiant stance of the Belgrade-backed Serbs in Bosnia Washington moved to teach them a lesson, turning over the two arrested officers to the Hague, and stepping up talk about more aggressively pursuing those charged with war crimes. The occupying forces are using the issue of the war crimes tribunal to take another step in their war preparations in Yugoslavia. Far from intervening to stop the brutal warring by the different gangster regimes there, Washington, London, Paris, Bonn, and the others have all deployed troops in order to advance competing imperialist interests in the region. All of them hope to lay the basis for restoring capitalism in Yugoslavia, and to gain an edge on their rivals in the process.
"The international community is not going to allow Karadzic and Mladic to escape," state department spokesman Nicholas Burns declared February 12. "They can't hide forever. Sooner or later they will stumble into a NATO checkpoint and they will be brought to justice."
U.S. defense secretary William Perry said February 13 the arrest of alleged war crime suspects would be "greatly facilitated by getting better information to the NATO forces on the identities, the pictures of these indicted war criminals."
"NATO does have instructions that if they come across any indicted war criminals they are to detain them and turn them over to the international tribunal," he said.
Bosnian Serb leaders were infuriated by the arrest of the two military leaders and said the extradition will aggravate tensions with the NATO occupation force. "This is a scandal - this is not justice," Dragan Bozanic, a spokesman for the Bosnian Serbs, said. "We are headed in the wrong direction. This can only harm the effort to make peace."
Karadzic, who made a defiant public appearance in Banja Luka February 9, called the tribunal "ridiculous." "It is not a court or a tribunal. It is a form of legal lynching," he said. To reach Banja Luka, the Washington Post reported, a motorcade carrying Karadzic and his entourage passed at least four imperialist checkpoints without any attempt to arrest him.
Washington `insists on compliance'
U.S. assistant secretary of state Richard Holbrooke said
in Hungary February 9, he would not tolerate any obstacles to
Washington's plans. Holbrooke, who helped draft the Dayton
agreement imposed on the warring factions, flew into
Yugoslavia February 11 for arm-twisting negotiations in
Zagreb, Sarajevo, and Belgrade.
"We are here to insist on full compliance with Dayton - no exceptions, no changes," he declared. "We consider this as the first serious challenge to the Dayton agreement." The assistant secretary of state said the commander of the NATO occupation force in Bosnia, U.S. admiral Leighton Smith, "can use force as he sees fit...whenever he feels that the mission is in danger."
The Bosnian government announced February 12 that it would not arrest individuals suspected of alleged war crimes without approval from the so-called international war crimes tribunal. The announcement followed meetings with Holbrooke.
Another headache for the imperialists popped up in Mostar, when hundreds of Croatian supporters of the regime in Zagreb protested European Union official Hans Koschnick's plans to reorganize the city and impose a central administration. Several hundred people occupied the European Union offices, smashed two of its cars, and jumped and rocked the car carrying Koschnick for more than an hour.
Meanwhile, Russian Gen. Pavel Grachev, in Belgrade to sign a defense agreement with the Serbian regime, called for the immediate release of Djordje and Krsmanovic. Moscow continues to grumble about NATO expansion plans. "Russia would seek to take measures to safeguard its own security," the Russian general said February 10. If NATO were extended, Moscow would "seek partners in the east" as well as countries of eastern and central Europe, and among the member states of the Commonwealth of Independent States in order to form a future military-political alliance," he added.