Bosnian Serbs

FOCA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Even by the not terribly high standards of Bosnia, the town called Foca is a grim, unlovely place. It huddles close to the Drina River in southeastern Bosnia like a scrap yard of ruined concrete alongside a maltreated creek.Foca is Bosnian Serb territory, and in the past 50 years it has been the site of two massacres that have an unsettling symmetry. In 1942, a force of Serbs overran a mainly Muslim militia that was the murderous puppet of the Nazi occupation forces, and once the militia was slaughtered, the Serbs moved on to kill thousands of Muslim civilians.

PALE, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The dismissal of Gen. Ratko Mladic, who has been indicted in war crimes, as leader of the Bosnian Serb army won support from Western officials yesterday.But foreign diplomats and Bosnian Serb officials warned that it was still unclear whether the Bosnian Serb president, Biljana Plavsic, who announced Friday night that she had dismissed the general, would succeed in asserting control over the army."We don't know what it is going to mean in substantive terms until the next couple of days have played out," said Maj. Simon Haselock, a NATO spokesman.

VIENNA, Austria -- The Bosnian Serbs have far more heavy weapons than they formally declared and have resorted to subterfuge to avoid destroying their excessive stock, said Western officials who have been meeting for the past two days.The violations of the Balkans arms-reduction agreement were determined by the officials who have been exchanging intelligence information in closed meetings.The greatest discrepancy is in the number of artillery pieces, the weapons that terrorized Sarajevo and laid waste to villages throughout Bosnia, according to U.S. and European intelligence agencies.

THE PRESIDENT of Bosnia, as confirmed by U.S.-sponsored elections, is a Muslim -- and therein lies some hope for eventual peace at the end of a long, twisted road.Like the Serb and Croat leaders who share a cumbersome tripartite presidency, Alija Izetbegovic favors the kind of fervent nationalism that plunged the Balkan nation into 3 1/2 years of civil war. But unlike his counterparts, he saw self-interest in a unified country dominated by its Muslim majority. The Serb and Croat members elected to the presidency campaigned in favor of partition and eventual union with "Mother Serbia" and "Mother Croatia."

WASHINGTON -- Although U.S. troops are scheduled to leave Bosnia at the end of this year, officials say the Clinton administration is keeping open the option of participating in a subsequent military force to maintain stability in the strife-riven Balkan nation.U.S. and European officials will begin to discuss the options seriously after the first postwar Bosnian national elections are held Sept. 14."The question of a follow-on force will be addressed once the election results are in," a senior administration official said this week.

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Conceding that "widespread abuse" has damaged the run-up to Bosnia's first postwar election, the U.S. diplomat in charge of the vote called off municipal balloting yesterday and raised the possibility of an extended stay for NATO peacekeeping troops.Bosnian Serb leaders, who were most keen on elections and who were accused of the most egregious abuses, blasted the delay as a "shameful act" and vowed to hold their own municipal contests.Ambassador Robert Frowick, who heads the international mission charged with supervising the elections, ordered postponement of voting in 109 municipalities in response to efforts by the Bosnian Serbs to create Serb majorities fraudulently in cities they seized during the war and emptied of Muslims through massacre and intimidation.

SINCE THE BOSNIAN civil war started in 1991, the scope and magnitude of the war crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina have been staggering. The body of evidence clearly indicates that the vast majority of these crimes have been committed by Bosnian Serbs against Bosnian Muslims.Rape, mass murders and torture have been commonplace. In 1995, testimony before the U.S. Helsinki Commission revealed a litany of horror: 200,000 people have been killed, most of them civilians; more than 500,000 people have been held in 800 prisons or detention centers; 151 mass grave sites have been identified; and more than 1,600 cases of rape and forced impregnation of girls and women have been documented.

WASHINGTON -- Setting the stage for a Bosnian war-crimes trial in an American court, the Supreme Court refused yesterday to block damage lawsuits against the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic.Without comment, the court left intact a federal appeals court ruling that clears the way for thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats to pursue their claims in a U.S. district court in New York City."It is safe to say that we are seeking hundreds of millions of dollars" from Karadzic, said Beth Stephens, a Rutgers University law professor who is handling one of the two cases.

PALE, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The directions to Radovan Karadzic's house are simple: Drive north from town on the road with potholes the size of Land Rovers. Pass a dusty gas station and cross a small bridge over a muddy stream. It's another mile past wandering cows and green meadows filled with buttercups before you see a narrow dirt road on your right.Look for five or six soldiers in camouflage lounging at a small booth. Karadzic's house is just up the lane, in a village of a dozen or so homes at the edge of the woods.

GENEVA -- The presidents of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia agreed yesterday to go ahead with Bosnian elections by mid-September even if indicted war crimes suspects Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic remain at liberty.U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher persuaded Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic to drop his earlier demand that the two Bosnian Serb leaders be arrested and sent to the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague before holding the elections. The U.S.-brokered agreement that ended Bosnia-Herzegovina's war stipulated that all war crimes suspects be removed from power.