THE US architect of the Dayton peace treaty on Bosnia, Mr Richard Holbrooke, returned to the region yesterday to seek the removal of the separatist Bosnian Serb leader, Dr Radoyan Karadzic, indicted on charges of genocide.
Mr Holbrooke, a former US assistant secretary of state, arrived in Sarajevo at mid day. The White House recalled Mr Holbrooke from his new job as a Wall Street investment banker to rescue flagging Western efforts to dislodge Dr Karadzic before Bosnia's first post war elections.
"I would be misleading you if I said this trip was one we want to make," Mr Holbrooke said on arrival at Sarajevo airport.
"We're here because we're not satisfied with the degree of compliance on the part of the parties in the region with the Dayton [peace] agreement, above all with attitudes of non-compliance by the Bosnian Serbs," he said.
Mr Holbrooke said he stopped over in Brussels on the way to Bosnia where he met the NATO Secretary General, Mr Javier Solana, and Gen George Joulwan of the US, NATO's supreme commander. Both promised full support to his mission.
Asked about a French proposal to have the UN Security Council specifically empower the NATO peace force in Bosnia (I-for) to hunt down Dr Karadzic and other men indicted by the UN criminal tribunal on former. Yugoslavia, Mr Holbrooke said. As far as I'm concerned, NATO has all the authority it needs to enforce compliance with [its mandate]."
Mr Holbrooke is to meet the I-for commander in chief, Admiral Leighton Smith of the US, and leaders of Bosnia's rival ethnic groups in Sarajevo before visiting Belgrade for talks with President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia.
As the Bosnian Serbs chief sponsor during the war and the man who signed, the Dayton accord on their behalf. Mr Milosevic is the man the international community had hoped would force Dr Karadzic out. Under Dayton, no individual indicted of war crimes is allowed to hold public office or participate in elections.
Mr Holbrooke said Mr Miloscvic could ensure that the September 14th inter ethnic elections came off as planned by "honouring the commitments he made at Dayton".
Mr Holbrooke was expected to swam Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs that UN sanctions could be reimposed if war criminals kept clinging to power.
Dr Karadzic has responded to international pressure to abandon political life by handing executives' powers to his deputy, Dr Biljana Plavsic, but retaining his title ash president. He also remains chairman of the ultra nationalist Serb Democratic Party (SDS) which affords him control over police band media in the half of Bosnia known as the Bosnian Serb Republic.
Western organisers of the September elections, intended to help reunify Bosnia, are keen to extinguish the influence of indicted war criminals bent on dismembering Bosnia for good.
But prospects for sidelining Dr Karadzic are clouded by divisions between the US and European allies, and within the EU, over how to do it without incurring NATO casualties or scuttling the election on Serb territory.
An EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday failed to resolve differences of approach to the problem.
Europe's socialists yesterday called for the arrest and trial on war crimes charges of Dr Karadzic and Gen Mladic. A resolution made public after a meeting of the Socialist International Committee for Central and Eastern Europe (SICEE) in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, said neither should play any role in the Bosnian elections in September.
"The (SICEE) reaffirms its full support for the work being carried out by the International Tribunal in The Hague and the absolute necessity that Karadzic, Mladic and the other war criminals be arrested prosecuted and punished for their crimes and, in, any event, that they have no role in the elections in September," it said.
The meeting was held to prepare for the Socialist International Congress to be held in New York in September.