BOSNIA: The international community's envoy to Bosnia, Lord Ashdown, sacked nine security officials from the country's Serb-run region yesterday for failing to arrest alleged war criminals.
The police and intelligence officers were the latest heads to roll over Republika Srpska's chronic failure to hunt down the likes of Mr Radovan Karadzic, the political leader of the Bosnian-Serbs during a 1992-95 war that killed 250,000 people.
Lord Ashdown fired 59 officials last summer from a Bosnian-Serb administration that he says is riddled with supporters of Mr Karadzic and his military commander, Gen Ratko Mladic, who routinely scuttle attempts to track down fugitives wanted by the United Nations' war crimes tribunal at The Hague.
"I have no other option but to act, as every week new evidence of obstruction comes to light," Lord Ashdown said.
Alongside him, Gen David Leakey, who leads the EU peacekeeping force that replaced NATO in Bosnia this month, announced that he would shut down the Han Pijesak military complex that was Gen Mladic's wartime stronghold.
He said a search this week of the underground base, about 30 miles east of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, had yielded evidence that Gen Mladic had been hiding there as recently as last summer.
Also yesterday, the US ambassador to Bosnia, Mr Douglas McElhaney said Washington had frozen the assets of the Serb Democratic Party, which was founded by Mr Karadzic, and banned its leaders from entering US territory.
Officials from the European Union and United States have repeatedly warned Republika Srpska, as well as Serbia proper, that they face prolonged international isolation if they continue to harbour war crimes suspects.
The revelation that Gen Mladic had been on the payroll of Bosnian-Serb military until mid-2002 was condemned by Lord Ashdown in a recent interview with The Irish Times (below) as an "outrageous, egregious" breach of Republika Srpska's obligations.
He was also critical of the Bosnian-Serbs' refusal this week to merge their police force with that of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation, a reform laid down by Brussels as essential to plans for the start of associate membership talks with the EU.
