INTERNATIONAL organisers said yesterday the campaign for elections in Bosnia, delayed at least until Friday, could not begin until the separatist Serb leader, Dr Radovan Karadzic, left political life.
Mr Robert Frowick, a US diplomat in charge of the September 14th ballot, said a "mutually acceptable" solution must be worked out with the Serbs before the campaign originally planned for July 14th could be declared open.
"It is my unalterable position that any political party that elects, appoints or maintains in office a person who is under indictment by the international tribunal for the former Yugoslavia shall be ineligible to participate in the elections," Mr Frowick said.
Mr Frowick heads the Bosnia office of the Organisation for Security and Co operation in Europe, which is arranging the elections to reconnect ethnic Serb and Muslim Croat entities in a democratic, federal Bosnia.
Under the Dayton peace treaty that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war, no individual charged with war atrocities by the tribunal may hold public office or participate in elections.
Dr Karadzic, twice indicted for alleged genocide, says he will not be a candidate but retains power in the Serb entity through his leadership of the ruling party.
The main US architect of Dayton, Mr Richard Holbrooke, is due in the region this week to lobby for Dr Karadzic's removal after France proposed empowering Nato peace troops in Bosnia to track down those indicted for war crimes.
Mr Frowick met Dr Karadzic's deputies last week to urge them to deal with the issue and "give them a bit of space and time for an outcome that would be mutually acceptable".
He has previously threatened to bar Dr Karadzic's Serb Democratic Party from the polling if Dr Karadzic remains.
The OSCE's brief to stage the elections is complicated not just by scores of indicted war criminals at large, most of them in Serb and Croat held parts of Bosnia, but by a lack of independent media and freedom of assembly in postwar Bosnia.
Bosnia's Muslim led central government hinted over the weekend at a possible boycott of the elections if Dr Karadzic and Gen Ratko Mladic, charged with masterminding wartime massacres and expulsions of Muslims, did not bow out.
The police chief in the Bosnian Serb capital, Pale, has threatened Nato troops and UN police if western forces try to arrest Serb leaders indicted as war criminals, the UN said yesterday.
Mr Alex Ivanko, spokesman for the International Police Task Force (IPTF) in post war Bosnia, said there was deep concern about the threat in light of recent Serb violence against the IPTF including the bombing of a patrol car on Friday.
"The threat was made on July 11th. The Pale police chief told us he was aware of `training' being conducted by I-for (Nato peace Implementation Force) to arrest Karadzic and Mladic," Mr Ivanko has said.
"He warned that if they are arrested or if there is an attempt to arrest them, the Serb population will be mobilised against Nato personnel," said Mr Ivanko.
Meanwhile, Nato said yesterday it had grounded Bosnian government military aircraft after finding four anti tank weapons and ammunition aboard a helicopter that should have been carrying passengers.
Nato peace force spokesman Maj Brett Boudreau said the incident in the Muslim controlled eastern town of Gorazde was a flagrant violation of a ban on weaponry outside closely monitored storage sites.
In the helicopter, rather than the 24 passengers it had been authorised to carry, there were four 75mm anti tank weapons and 148 rounds of anti tank ammunition, Maj Boudreau told a news conference in Sarajevo.