The New York Times

Thursday July 17, 1997

Serbs Threaten Retaliation for War-Crime Arrests, U.N. Says

By MIKE O'CONNOR

SARAJEVO Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 16 - The Bosnian Serb authorities are threatening wide-spread retaliation against NATO soldiers if they try to make further arrests of War crime suspects, United Nations officials said today. An American soldier was slightly wounded today by, a man wielding a sickle, in the latest of several

incidents that followed the arrest last Thursday of a Bosnian Serb charged with war crimes. A second suspect was killed in a shootout with NATO

forces.

NATO officers have privately warned the Bosnian Serb authorities that they will respond militarily if the Serbs retaliate against the international force in Bosnia. But the officers say they are deliberately leaving vague the question of precisely what circumstances would trigger a NATO reaction, and what form it would take.

In their public statements, Bosnian Serb leaders have denounced the arrests, but tit the same time they have urged people not to retaliate.

News coverage and commentaries on state-controlled Bosnian Serb television and radio, on the other hand, have been inflammatory.

News broadcasts call the NATO action illegal and, in a message calculated to generate widespread antipathy toward NATO, suggest that any man who served in the Bosnian Serb army during the war that ended a years and half ago could be subjected to arrest. In fact, only the handful of people indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague face apprehension.

The American soldier who was attacked today is part of a team of about 10 soldiers based in the town of Vlasenica. The soldiers' job an Army spokesman said, is to maintain contact with Bosnian Serb military units nearby.

The spokesman said the soldier had been investigating a suspicious noise outside his quarters early this morning when he was attacked.

Army spokesmen declined to identify the wounded soldier, but the Bosnian Serb police said he was Roberto Ducato.

Since Sunday there 'have been three attacks aimed at international organizations. None of the others caused injuries.

The first, in the city of Zvornik, was a large explosive charge detonated under a pickup truck belonging to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

There have been two smaller explosions, one detonated near the car of a United Nations police monitor, and the other near the home of an election monitor.

While saying they are not sure that there is a coordinated campaign against them, foreign organizations are telling their workers to avoid unnecessary movement in public and to be very watchful.

After increasing their alert status on Friday, NATO forces returned to normal by Tuesday.

Pamphlets threatening attacks on NATO forces have appeared in several towns. One pamphlet says, "Somalia was too gentle," reference to the killing of 18 Army Rangers in Somalia after they sought to arrest the leader of one of the factions there.

A United Nations official said the police had been seen distributing the pamphlets in the town of Doboj.

Apart fron the NATO forces, the largest international group in the Serbian-held half of Bosnia is the United Nations police monitors, numbering about 800. Many of them are Americans.

There are about 200 other foreigners who regularly work for international agencies in Bosnian Serb territory.

The threats by the Bosnian Serb authorities are a

familiar tactic, one that has proved successful in the past. The Bosnian Serbs were able to stop air strikes against them in 1995 by taking United Nations peacekeepers hostage. Fear of retaliation often crippled the peacekeeping mission here, turning Western, countries against each other in bitter debates over how to respond to the threats and allowing Bosnian Serb forces to defy United Nations resolutions.

Until last week the prospect of retaliation against NATO soldiers or International organizations was used as an argument against arresting war crime suspects.

The Serbs are very good at this game," a senior United Nations official here said. "They know they can promise to cooperate, but then someone throws a grenade here or makes a small attack there, and it all keeps the pressure up. It tan keep the international community off guard."

A Western official who works In the Bosnian Serb area said he, like many others, was surprised that there had not been more attacks.

But he said that if the Bosnian Serb leadership decided to change its tactics and put more pressure on the West, the situation could suddenly become very dangerous for him as well as anyone else working for an International agency, here.