Posted on 12/16/2004 2:04:51 PM PST by Hoplite
US Joins in Coordinated Moves on Balkans War Crimes Fugitives
By David Gollust
State Department
16 December 2004
The international community Thursday announced new measures against Bosnian Serb officials for failing to hand over indicted Balkans war crimes figures to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague. They include targeted sanctions by the United States.
The coordinated action by the United States, the International High Representative for Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, and European Union peacekeepers in Bosnia reflects international frustration that key Balkans war crimes figures remain at large.
Mr. Ashdown, international overseer of the 1995 Dayton accords on the Balkans conflict, that ended the Balkans war, announced the firing of six Bosnian Serb police officers and three other officials for failing to arrest war crimes suspects or obstructing the process.
The U.S. ambassador to Bosnia, Douglas McElhaney, appearing with Mr. Ashdown at a Sarejevo news conference, said U.S. financial and travel sanctions were being imposed against Bosnian Serb political parties and officials.
European Union peacekeepers, meantime, raided an underground bunker complex once used by former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic.
Ratko Mladic, along with wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, is accused of genocide and crimes against humanity in the Balkans conflict. They are the most prominent of several war crimes figures still at large.
At a news briefing, State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said the United States is committed to do everything it can with its international partners to locate the fugitives, and to isolate those who seem to be supporting and hiding them:
"The essence of this is that we are acting in concert with these other entities. We are acting to impose restrictions on the Serbian party leadership that we think had been colluding with Mladic, Karadzic, these kind of people, to protect them," Mr. Boucher said.
The U.S. sanctions include a travel ban against the leadership of two major Bosnian- Serb political parties, the Party for Democratic Progress and the Serb Democratic party, or SDS, which was founded by Radovan Karadzic.
The measures also freeze any assets the parties may have in the United States and bar Americans from financial dealings with them. In addition, the U.S. Treasury Department added three companies and six individuals to a financial blacklist of persons and entities deemed to be impeding implementation of the Dayton accords.
Mr. Ashdown has the power to remove local officials who are not cooperating with the U.N. Balkans war crimes tribunal. The officials he fired Thursday included several local police chiefs in the semi-independent ethnic-Serb republic in Bosnia.
Mr. Ashdown told reporters in Sarajevo that Ratko Mladic had been seen less than six months ago at the Han-Pijesak bunker complex raided by the European Union troops Thursday.
The EU force commander reported no arrests at the site, but said the facility was inspected and will be closed down. It was the first operation of its kind by the European Union contingent since it took over peacekeeping duties from NATO troops earlier this month.
Now you see it.
Soon you won't.
What in this article hints that anyone is planning on revoking the autonomy of RS? And even if it happens, how will that solve anything?
With them gone, the Republika Srpska's border with the rest of Bosnia will become effectively meaningless, ergo, no more autonomy.
With the loss of control over the police and borders, so goes the ability to take income derived from those borders away from the supposed beneficiaries, the citizens of the Republika Srpska, and feed it into criminal enterprises, whether they operate for sheer profit or for the protection of war criminals.
In short, protecting Karadzic and Mladic isn't in the interests of the citizens of the Republika Srpska, to say nothing of being directly at odds with the responsibilities of the Republika Srpska under the very agreement which legitimized its existence, the Dayton Accords, but the government in Banja Luka does it anyway - so the Republika Srpska is being abolished.
What borders are you talking about, along the Drina? You've gotta be my huckleberry if you think the border posts between the Federation and the RS, isnt that what you are referring to instead?
I have pictures of the "borders" to prove you are wrong, wrong, wrong.
The borders are meaningless, there is full trade/commerce each day. The differance is, the muslims do not trade with the Serbs very much. The ration between the Croats and Serbs are stupendiously higher though there still exists animosity among a dwindling minority.
Paddy will not get his full wish, mark my word. The bad word of the day is "Islam, muslim" and Paddy may hate the Serbs, but he will be reigned in if he goes too far. Already that was in evidence this past year.
Radovan is a legend, he will not be turned in by the indigenous people, only from the diaspora will it be done.
Mladic will fall too ill and negotiate a turn-in. He was nearly caught by an innocent Serb Army patrol near Topcider last October. Tadic knows where he is, but learned from the Djindjic debacled-era to toe the Serb patriot line, otherwise, he meets the same fate from his own people.
The RS and the Federation are already as ONE. They have autonomy today, with their own seperate commerce and custom regulations. They share patrols at the internationally recognized border crossings, and that is it.
BiH is a done deal, that is why US is out of there, they wiped their hands clean of SFOR and moved onto Kosovo where the situation with the Albanians is tedious and worsening to continious armed confrontations.
Who says it's supposed to solve anything? It's sharedes. A little pretend and a little Hollywood.
BiH is a done deal -- for now. Just for now.
You outsiders will never learn that imposing political solutions in the Balkans never lasts.
All it does is turn the heat up slowly.
So your arguments are that if the autonomy of RS was revoked, it woudl result in the capture of Mladic/Karadzic, and it would reduce corruption? I doubt either would happen.
Nice to know.
It will, however, discomfit them, and those who continue to support them, greatly, as it takes money to both hide them and keep the security forces paid.
As to a reduction in corruption, did you follow the travails of Ante Jelavic and Hercegovacka Banka? Any reduction in the power of Bosnia's ethno-nationalist nutjobs results in a commensurate reduction in corruption, as corruption, and the money to be made therein, is their raison d'etre.
That is a done deal.
Bosnia is different.
Hoppy, your views on corruption re: Jelavic are completely misinformed. You know very well that the campaign against him was completely political. I assume you know that the largest corruption scandals in Bosnia in the postwar era have centred around the multinational SDP party, and not the ethnic parties.
It's a done deal when you've gotten what you want, and still up in the air when you haven't.
I take it you're not familiar with the recent unguarded comments of Tomislav Nikolic?
What you and he consider to be up in the air and done deals aren't really in agreement, are they.
As to Jelavic, how do you expect to be taken seriously when you're no different from our Serb nationalists with this "innocent lambs, persecuted" BS?
Save it for someone else, Dio - Hercegovacka Banka was set up to transfer funds from Croatia proper to Bosnian Croats, and when those funds dried up, Jelavic and his friends merely started raiding the accounts of savings depositors, leaving the bank insolvent by the time the OHR stepped in.
Just another case of nationalists screwing the people they're supposed to be representing, and getting support for it here on FR.
If Croatian savings were raided, why didn´t any Croats protest against this supposed ´´theft´´?
trop, they (the Croats) were too busy coordinating ethnic cleansing with the Serbs against the world, i guess.
ha ha
how was your visit to the RSK and Croatia region? That was my first time in the krajina last october, so i can't say what changes were made over the years. I did like all the road lights in the middle of knowhere.
I haven´t made my way down there yet.....i´m in switzerland for the next few months.
I expect it's probably for the same reason no Croats protested while Tudjman was stealing money hand over fist in Croatia proper - it's bad for one's health in an unpatriotic kind of way.
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