Premier of Serb region in Bosnia resigns over sackings

BOSNIA: The prime minister of Bosnia's Serb-run region resigned yesterday over the sacking of nine of his security officials for failing to arrest suspected war criminals.

Mr Dragan Mikerevic stepped down a day after Lord Ashdown, the international community's High Representative to Bosnia, fired the police, border and intelligence officers and accused the administration in Republika Srpska of helping wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military henchman Gen Ratko Mladic evade capture.

"I am not ready to accept and implement threats and ultimatums of the high representative . . . gravely breaching the constitution," Mr Mikerevic said.

Mr Mikerevic's position was undermined this week by a US decision to slap a travel ban on the leaders of his Party for Democratic Progress, along with those of the Serb Democratic Party that was founded by Mr Karadzic.

Lord Ashdown said that he had been left with no choice but to sack Mr Mikerevic's colleagues by Republika Srpska's chronic failure to fulfil its commitments on war crimes suspects under the Dayton Accord, which ended the 1992-95 war and divided Bosnia into a Serb-run entity and a Croat-Muslim federation.

He was also angry at the Serb government's refusal to merge its interior and defence ministries with those of the Croat-Muslim region, and its resistance to the creation of a unified Bosnian police force.

Lord Ashdown's latest use of his powers - which he also used to sack 59 Bosnian Serb officials in the summer - infuriated Republika Srpska's president, Mr Dragan Cavic, who accused him of siding with the, mostly Muslim, Party of Democratic Action (SDA).

"Ashdown's decision will escalate into a serious political crisis," Mr Cavic said. "Mostly because [ he] has completely sided with the SDA and is only working to make their wishes come true regarding the disappearance of Republika Srpska."

Appeals judges at the UN tribunal have upheld the sentence of a former Bosnian Croat politician found guilty of war crimes but slashed the jail term of a co-defendant former military commander.

The court said yesterday that the original sentence handed down in 2001 against former Bosnian Croat political leader Dario Kordic, the first senior politician convicted by the Hague UN war crimes tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia, was justified.

Kordic was sentenced to 25 years in jail after being found guilty of crimes against humanity for a string of savage attacks on Bosnian Muslims between 1991 and 1994.

Judges ruled then that he ordered the notorious Ahmici village massacre in April 1993, in which Bosnian Croats murdered more than 100 people before torching their homes.

The court allowed appeals on several individual points of Kordic's conviction, but said it was not enough to warrant a change in his sentence.

Judges ruled, however, that a 15-year sentence for former Bosnian Croat military commander Mario Cerkez was not merited and cut his sentence to six years - less than the seven years he has already spent in detention at the tribunal.

Earlier this month the appeals chamber ordered Cerkez's immediate release.