Take the road out of Sarajevo, head 16km (10 miles) east up over the mountains, go through several tunnels and you are in Pale, centre for the Bosnian Serb hardliners and home to Dr Radovan Karadzic, the indicted war criminal. Pale, or "Serb Sarajevo" as its residents call it, is not much of a capital. A mish-mash of new and old buildings, this skiing village used to be a popular spot with
Sarajevans.
But the only Sarajevans in Pale these days are those Serbs who fled the city during the war, unable to live with their former Muslim or Croat neighbours. Today it is where the hardliners of the main
Bosnian Serb Party, the SDS, run the country and, some argue, the smuggling rackets that Mrs Biljana Plavsic, President of the Bosnian
Serbs, is trying to stamp out.
Mrs Plavsic has lost a power struggle with hardliners in her party after being expelled from the Serb Democratic Party amid allegations that she was colluding with western powers in betrayal of her own people's interests. Downtown Pale is a narrow street pockmarked with potholes and lined with shabby old cars parked on the kerbs. A couple of miles up the road is the home of Dr Karadzic.
It is a no-go zone for foreigners. The guards, dressed in their petrol-blue fatigues, are on alert when strangers approach.
Dr Karadzic is well protected. His house, hidden in the forests, shields him from the international community, which wants to see him put on trial at the International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.
Analysts say that now that NATO has started taking action against suspected war criminals, it must ultimately arrest Dr Karadzic and his wartime army chief, Gen Ratko Mladic.
But Dr Karadzic is a hero to many Bosnian Serbs for his behaviour during the bloody 40month conflict.
The only thing he was doing was defending his own people, says
63year-old Bosco Bogdanovic angrily. He believes Karadzic was "always for peace." Any attempt to arrest him would lead to trouble. "He has all the people here to protect him," he says. The language of resistance is echoed by SDS politicians. According to Mr Dragan
Bozanic, the Serb Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, it is against the constitution of the Bosnian Serb Republic to hand over indicted war criminals. "We have been fighting for our liberty for 500 five hundred years; we do not have any hope but to defend ourselves," he says. - (Guardian Service)
Reuter adds from Sarajevo:The US ambassador to the United Nations said yesterday that Bosnian Serb retaliation against a tougher international approach to indicted war criminals was intolerable.
International monitors and peacekeeping soldiers have been targets of a series of small-scale explosions over the past 10 days, since a
NATO raid on two Serb suspects wanted by the United Nations for war crimes.
"Recent provocations in Republika Srpska are intolerable and if not ended could pull us down an extremely dangerous road," said Mr
Bill Richardson. He said General William Crouch, the US commander of the NATOled Stabilisation Force (SFOR), had assured him that SFOR
would "not be deterred".