WAR CRIMES IN BOSNIA

The New York Times, Wednesday, May 8, 1996

Dusan Tadic went on trial this Tuesday in The Hague for war crimes in Bosnia, the first defendant to face the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Mr. Tadic, a Bosnian Serb, is accused of specific acts of murder and torture, but not of masterminding the brutal human rights abuses that were the signature of the Balkan war. That distinction belongs to other men, and the work of the tribunal should be measured by whether it is given the support necessary to pursue and prosecute them.

Political and practical obstacles make it unlikely that many of those who engineered the ethnic slaughter in Bosnia will be captured and brought to trial. The unspoken price of the Dayton peace agreement seems to be indifference about the atrocities committed by all parties during the war. But while the United States and other nations may be defeated in the end by these impediments, they should be stubborn in the pursuit of justice.

The individuals who carried out the Bosnian war's worst crimes like "ethnic cleansing," torture, rape and mass executionshould be held accountable for their actions. Otherwise, surviving victims will be tempted to retaliate indiscriminately against innocent members of the ethnic groups that these criminals claimed to serve. Such vendettas would decrease the chances that Muslims, Croats and Serbs can once again learn to live together.

To date only three of the 57 indicted war crimes defendantsone Serb and two Croatsare in custody in The Hague. None of them were arrested by Serbian or Croatian authorities, despite their obligation under the Dayton agreement to assist in the investigation and prosecution of war crimes. In contrast, the Bosnian Muslim authorities promptly arrested two of the three recently indicted Muslim defendants, and the third is in custody in Germany. Almost all the other defendants remain at large, including Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader, and General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander.

The West has considerable diplomatic leverage with Franjo Tudjman, the Croatian president, who is eager to see his country accepted by Washington and integrated into European institutions at the earliest possible date. Serbia is subject to the automatic reimposition of costly economic sanctions if President Slobodan Milosevic fails to comply with the war crimes requirements of the Dayton accord. Western governments have so far preferred not to use their leverage. Carl Bildt, the chief international civilian representative in Bosnia, has not made war crimes a high priority. The NATO peacekeeping forces, while rightly hoping to avoid reckless manhunts, have gone too far in the other direction, leaving the impression that they have no interest in supporting the investigation of war crimes or the pursuit of war criminals. This behavior is shortsighted. Credible war crimes prosecutions are not only important to the prospects for long-term peace in Bosnia. They also bear on the country's civil tranquillity in the

coming months. That may affect the climate at the time of NATO's scheduled withdrawal at year's end.

Of all the aspects of the Bosnian peace, the prosecution of warcriminals may be the most sensitive and politically charged. Presidents Milosevic and Tudjman would no doubt like to avoid trials of defendants that might expose suspected links between their own military forces and Bosnian ethnic militias.

But the difficulty inherent in holding people accountable for the terrible crimes of the Balkan war is no reason to brush off the job. Western governments must insist that the Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian governments live up to the commitments they made to bring war criminals to justice.