HARDLINE nationalists ignored President Biljana Plavsic's order to dissolve the Bosnian Serb parliament and went ahead with a session yesterday which will try to remove her from power.
The attempt to dismiss Ms Plavsic stems from her conflict with the government and ex-president Dr Radovan Karadzic, who was forced to resign from all public offices a year ago after being indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal.
Opposition and Muslim legislators stayed away from the parliamentary session in Pale, making it likely that Dr Karadzic and his allies would get their way.
Any attempt to topple Ms Plavsic would put the hardliners on a collision course with international mediators implementing the 1995 peace agreement. The mediators have endorsed her constitutional authority in the Serb Republic entity of Bosnia.
Ms Plavsic, accusing the ultra-nationalists of corrupting the government and isolating Bosnian Serbs from the world by obstructing the implementation of peace measures, dissolved parliament on Thursday and set new elections for September 1st.
She was supported yesterday by 7,000 demonstrators who gathered outside her office in the northern town of Banja Luka and urged her not to back down.
"I'm sorry this happened but crime must be stopped," Ms Plavsic told them. "(War) victims did not fall for a state of thieves but for a state of honest people."
Representatives of the UN and the Organisation for Security and Co- operation in Europe (OSCE) in Sarajevo warned the Serb hardliners that they would no longer recognise decisions taken by the parliament.
The independent Belgrade news agency Beta quoted Ms Plavsic as saying she feared her life may now be in danger over her revelations about corruption.
She alleged that three members of Bosnian Serb state security forces who were found in a room opposite her office on Thursday were monitoring her movements.
Western mediators did not hide the fact that efforts to rebuild Bosnia on the basis of the Dayton peace agreement, which set up a Serb republic and Muslim-Croat federation loosely linked by a multi-ethnic presidency, were at a turning point.
A diplomat in Sarajevo said: "If we are willing to see the one person in power in Republika Srpska (Serb Republic) who is willing to carry out the peace agreement be crushed by an indicted war criminal, where are we?"
Meanwhile, reports that British and American special forces are about to seize Dr Karadzic and Gen Ratko Mladic as war criminals intensified despite emphatic official denials.
The seizure might be timed, it was suggested, to coincide with next week's NATO summit in Madrid. The rumours appear to reflect an internal debate between politicians pressing for imminent action and senior military officials counselling caution.
The reports first surfaced on Republika Srpska television on Thursday, claiming that orders to seize the two were issued on June 18th. One of three United States special forces units based in northern Bosnia would take part, said the report, which hinted that Ms Plavsic might have been advised of the plan.