Word: serb
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Diplomacy is often a high-stakes game of chicken. This time the showdown is between the U.S. and Serb President Slobodan Milosevic over the fate of Radovan Karadzic, Bosnia's defiant Serb leader and most-wanted war criminal. His continued authority and freedom have been galling the West ever since the Dayton peace accords promised last December that he would be dumped from power and delivered to trial. Now he stands squarely in the way of Washington's rickety peace plan to hold "free and fair" elections this September in Bosnia--elections that will allow NATO forces to declare success...
...certification approaches, it is suddenly urgent to get rid of Karadzic and Mladic. The problem commands the highest priority at the White House, and other Western officials share the anxiety. Richard Goldstone, chief prosecutor at the Hague tribunal, appealed in Washington for military action to apprehend the Bosnian Serb ringleaders but returned last week with no encouragement. Bildt attempted to sideline Karadzic by elevating more moderate political rivals, among them Prime Minister Rajko Kasagic. When Karadzic sacked the Prime Minister two weeks ago, Bildt labored to transform the dismissal into a real power split that would displace Karadzic...
...tells TIME that the merciless siege of Vukovar, in which Croats claim some 2,000 of their kin perished, illustrates Milosevic's method. The President made a "general decision" to "free" Yugoslav army troops in barracks "blockaded" inside predominantly Croat cities. "No siege order was issued," says Jovic; Serb troops merely went to the aid of their confreres, only to be repulsed by "Croats who managed to maintain control over our barracks for a long time...
...agree Milosevic was always careful to establish plausible deniability. He was not officially commander in chief of the Yugoslav army: while some top officers personally owed him loyalty, they formally reported to a civilian panel. The real villainy, investigators say, was conducted through the Interior Ministry, home of the Serb secret police and Milosevic's inner circle of advisers. These were men who actually drew the plans for ethnic cleansing and transmitted orders to carry it out. They were spotted now and then in the war zone, under assumed names, disguised, talking to Bosnian Serb political and military officials...
...luxe marble mansion that he clearly did not buy out of earnings from his cafe. He is affiliated with Belgrade's biggest soccer club and appears at film premieres, in expensive restaurants, on TV talk shows. In an elaborate 1995 ceremony, where he dressed up as a royalist Serb officer, he took as his third bride the country's most popular folk singer...