SEPARATIST Serb authorities in the northern Bosnian town of Doboj have threatened to take UN police officers hostage if western forces try to arrest the Bosnian Serb leader, Dr Radovan Karadzic, the UN said yesterday.
There are 67 members of the Garda Siochana serving in the region, 36 in Yugoslavia itself and 31 in Bosnia. The UN police force is commanded by Ireland's Assistant Commissioner Peter Fitzgerald.
The warning followed threats by the police chief in the Serb capital, Pale, to harm UN police and Nato peace troops should the West attempt to seize Serb leaders wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal on former Yugoslavia.
Mr Alex Ivanko, spokesman for the International Police Task Force in post war Bosnia, said the IPTF was worried about proliferating Serb threats as pressure grows to arrest Dr Karadzic to prevent him undermining free elections scheduled for September.
"IPTF in Doboj has been [informed] that if an operation is mounted to arrest Karadzic, IPTF personnel will be taken hostage in the area," Mr Ivanko told a news conference in the Bosnian government capital, Sarajevo.
He said the threat was reportedly broadcast by local radio, a familiar tactic of Serb authorities to incite mobs against an unwanted Western presence or Muslim refugees trying to revisit former homes on Serb terrain.
Mr Ivanko said the Interior Minister in the half of Bosnia controlled by breakaway Serbs, Mr Dragan Kijac, had written to the IPTF promising to do whatever was needed to protect its officers.
"We hope, therefore, that it [the Doboj threat] is only a local initiative," Mr Ivanko said. "But we are worried about this in light of recent incidents . . . reports of which are landing on my table on a daily basis."
He mentioned in particular a bomb that destroyed a parked IPTF vehicle and shattered 30 windows in the IPTF office in the eastern Serb town of Vlasenica on Friday. No one was hurt.
Western security sources who asked not to be named said Mr Kijac's promise of security was scarcely credible, but the IPTF could rely on Nato's 53,000 strong peace Implementation Force (Ifor) for protection.
The spokesman said Ifor had stepped up patrols near the known, heavily guarded lairs of Dr Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb army chief, Gen Ratko Mladic, who has also been indicted for war crimes, and this is clearly unnerving a lot of the bad boys out there".
France is seeking a UN Security Council decision authorising Nato troops to hunt down Dr Karadzic and other indictees. At the moment, Nato has said it will only swoop if it encounters suspects during routine patrols.