“Serbian Republic may vanish unless the European standards adopted”

SFOR representatives in Bosnia try once again to get on the tracks of ex-leaders of Bosnia’s Serbs Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. Posters with their portraits announcing a $5 million reward for information about the location of Mladic and Karadzic are all around Bosnia. Leaflets printed in the form of US dollars of the same content have been scattered from the air over some regions of the Serbian Republic (in particular, near the eastern town of Foca, where an operation for Karadjic capture had failed two weeks ago). Special hot phone lines and e-mail have been opened for the residents to report any information about Karadzic and Mladic. Reuters informs, at the US administration’s suggestion the local mass media have launched an aggressive campaign against the influential leaders of Bosnia’s Serbs.

SFOR press department says, the campaign has brought no results yet. Bosnia’s Serbs ignore the leaflets, tear off the posters, slogans in support of Karadzic and Mladic have been posted everywhere instead. The leaders are still popular among the population.

The last large-scale operation for Radovan Karadzic’s capture was held by the international peacemaking troops in the eastern Bosnia near Celebice and Srbine on February 28. As the operation failed then, NATO wanted to find a culprit; they decided to find him not among SFOR servicemen in Bosnia, but in the NATO headquarters in Brussels.

The Sunday Times reported, “NATO had performed a linguistic analysis of a taped telephone conversation in which someone from the headquarters told Serbian police about SFOR coming operation for capture of Karadzic.”

Other sources report, the head of the US mission in Bosnia says the police was informed of the operation by a French officer from SFOR.

In any case, Karadzic and Mladic are at large. The author of this article has recently got a letter from an acquaintance of him, a Serbian journalist. He says, a new game has been invented among the Serbs. It is called “I am sitting here with Karadzic”. It looks like this: you phone the best friend of yours and say “Hello, how are you?” – “OK”, he says – “What are you doing now?” – “I am sitting here with Radovan Karadzic.”

Nedeljni Telegraf, a Yugoslavian newspaper, has quoted UN High Commissioner for Bosnia and Herzegovina Volfgang Petric: “The Serbian Republic may vanish unless it adopts the European standards.”

Very soon PRAVDA.Ru is to publish “notes from the underground”, so-called philosophical thoughts of Radovan Karadzic under the title “Was it a war?” dedicated to 1992-1995 Bosnian war and to the phenomenon of Bosnia’s Serbs.

Sergey Stefanov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Maria Gousseva

In the photo: Radovan Karadzic

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/03/15/38249.html