Bosnian Serb Premier Fights His Ouster

PALE, Bosnia-Herzegovina — In a showdown that could influence the success or failure of the Bosnian peace accord, the moderate Bosnian Serb prime minister fired by Radovan Karadzic refused Thursday to go quietly.

And NATO’s top guns--the political ones, at least--rallied to his defense, turning quickly to Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to demand help in eliminating Karadzic, an indicted war crimes suspect, from Bosnia’s turbulent political scene.

A seismic split in the Bosnian Serb leadership widened when Rajko Kasagic, flanked by senior Western envoys, announced he would resist Karadzic’s decision to remove him as prime minister. Speaking in his own, rival stronghold, Banja Luka, in northern Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kasagic accused Karadzic of taking his people down a path of doom.

“I guarantee the salvation of the Serbian people, while he is leading the people into ruin,” Kasagic told reporters, calling Karadzic an “illegitimate” leader creating an “evil” state.

The power struggle pits Karadzic and other hard-line Bosnian Serbs based in the southeastern village of Pale, who continue to advocate ethnic segregation and to obstruct key elements of the Bosnian peace plan, against moderate--or at least more pragmatic--Bosnian Serb politicians based in Banja Luka, who have shown willingness to cooperate with the West’s peacemaking efforts.

Western envoys who met with Kasagic in Banja Luka and very publicly embraced him included NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana and Carl Bildt, the senior civilian in charge of implementing the Bosnia peace plan drafted last fall in Dayton, Ohio.

Solana and U.S. Army Gen. George A. Joulwan, supreme commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization military forces, then continued to Belgrade, capital of Serbia and the rump Yugoslavia, to meet with Milosevic. Solana arrived at Milosevic’s office accompanied by a contingent of U.S. diplomats, who planted a communications satellite dish in the Serbian president’s front lawn.

In Washington, a State Department official said that Karadzic’s attempt to fire Kasagic underlined the need to remove Karadzic.

“A number of things [are] being discussed, ranging from denouncing him verbally, which we do all the time anyway, to removing him physically,” the official said. “There are no good solutions. If you remove him physically, do he and [Bosnian Serb army commander Gen. Ratko] Mladic turn into instant martyrs? Do they put someone just as bad into power?”

“What we now see is a major political battle shaping up in Republika Srpska for the future of the country,” said Bildt, who was in Bosnia.

Bildt also said Milosevic will be warned that there may be “consequences” if he fails to hold up his part of the Dayton bargain, which included the removal of indicted war criminals from public office.

Following his acceptance of the peace accord, Milosevic was rewarded with the lifting of international economic sanctions placed on his government as punishment for his role in fomenting the war in Bosnia.

But Milosevic has advocated allowing elections scheduled for this fall to complete the task of ousting Karadzic. Bildt and others argue, however, that leaving Karadzic in place until the elections will only allow him to establish his own proxies as successors.

Still, with international pressure on him mounting, Milosevic was quick to condemn Karadzic’s attempt to oust Kasagic as an “unacceptable and illegal act.”

In Pale, Karadzic’s bucolic mountain headquarters nine miles southeast of Sarajevo, the official media controlled by Karadzic churned out a stream of reports supporting the self-declared president’s actions and attacking Kasagic and Bildt.

Kasagic’s principal sins, according to Karadzic’s television and radio, were his efforts to abide by elements of the Dayton accord that provided for better relationships with the Muslim-Croat side of Bosnia. Anything that promotes the re-integration of Republika Srpska into the rest of Bosnia is anathema to Karadzic, who waged war on the basis of ethnic division.

Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this report.