BOSNIA's Serbs yesterday once again defied international efforts to hold free and fair general elections in Bosnia by nominating indicted war crimes suspect, Dr Radovan Karadzic, as a candidate.
Dr Karadzic's Serb Democratic Party (SDS) nominated the hardline leader to run for the presidency of the Bosnian Serb entity, the official SRNA news agency reported, even though as a war crimes suspect he is prohibited from running for election and holding public office.
The typical piece of Serb brinkmanship came as the chairman of the Organisation for Security and Co operation in Europe (OSCE), which is organising Bosnia's first post war general elections, strongly hinted they would go ahead by mid September as planned.
Mr Flavio Cotti said in Vienna he would announce on Tuesday whether conditions exist for free and fair elections to be held by the date specified in the Dayton peace accords for Bosnia.
"Unanimity seems to (have been) reached concerning respecting (the) timetable of Dayton," Mr Cotti said.
International officials implementing the Dayton accords have pushed for Dr Karadzic to be sidelined from the political process in the former Yugoslav republic and to appear before the UN tribunal in The Hague, which has indicted him on genocide and war crimes charges.
In Sarajevo yesterday, the office of the EU's representative, Mr Carl Bildt, dismissed Dr Karadzic's candidacy to the upcoming elections as a "provocation".
At last week's review of the Bosnian peace in Florence, Italy, OSCE mission leader in Bosnia, Mr Robert Frowick, specifically ruled out the possibility of Dr Karadzic running for office.
Mr Frowick said the OSCE was in charge of printing ballot papers for the series of seven votes to be held in Bosnia by September 14th, and would not allow the indicted war crimes suspect to appear on voting slips.
OSCE voting rules, which, he said, had precedence over electoral laws in both Bosnia's entities, did not permit names to be added to ballot papers, he added.
. The Serbian President, Mr Slobodan Milosevic, and his supporters in Pale are considering action to remove Dr Karadzic from power, a senior US official claimed yesterday.
Undersecretary of State Mr Peter Tarnoff indicated that the threat of reimposing sanctions on Belgrade had prompted the Serbleaders to consider demands from the United States and its allies that Dr Karadzic be removed.
"We have had some indications that the authorities in Belgrade and even some of the divided leadership in the Republika Srpska are thinking about the consequences," Mr Tarnoff said.