The Bosnian Serb President, Ms Biljana Plavsic, said yesterday infiltrators from Yugoslavia had played a role in a riot by Serbs against peacekeeping troops. President Biljana Plavsic, speaking to reporters after meeting a US diplomat, Mr Robert Farrand, said criminals had been bussed in from neighbouring Yugoslavia for the riot in the sensitive north Bosnian town of Brcko, in which two US soldiers were injured. She did not identify who orchestrated the event.
"To take such irresponsible action there, driving in criminals from Yugoslavia . . . and then put women and children up front as shields is insane and amoral for any normal man," said Ms Plavsic, who has been waging a power struggle against hardliners loyal to indicted war criminal and former Bosnian Serb president, Dr Radovan Karadzic.
Mr Farrand, the westernappointed supervisor for Brcko, a town whose fate was left open under the Dayton peace accords ending the Bosnian war, also said outsiders were involved but stopped short of naming a country.
"We are absolutely certain that those who organised this, those who took part in this contrived violence, were from outside Brcko," he said.
"When I say outsiders, I'm not only talking about persons from outside Brcko, I'm talking outside Bosnia-Herzegovina. By that, I mean persons from another country."
Asked if he was referring to Yugoslavia, he said: "Draw your own conclusions."
President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, chief patron of the Bosnian Serbs, has been under severe pressure from the international community, and the US in particular, to back Ms Plavsic but so far has refused to do so.
The riot took western military authorities by surprise, breaking out in the early morning when US soldiers assigned to the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) in Bosnia tried to install Plavsic loyalists to take command of the police department.
Hundreds of people attacked the soldiers, throwing petrol bombs at their vehicles and hitting soldiers with clubs and bricks. Two US soldiers were injured, one seriously.
The White House issued a stern warning against attacks on the Bosnia peacekeepers and the NATO command in Brussels said it would take action against radio, television or other media which incited violence against its forces.
Ms Plavsic said she had been briefed on what happened in Brcko and the nearby town of Bijeljina, where residents blocked an SFOR patrol, by her security forces, the NATO commander in Bosnia, US Gen Eric Shinseki, and Mr Farrand.
"Indeed, I can now very responsibly say that politicians who were present in the region of Brcko and Bijeljina are guilty of manipulating these people." she said.
"What they have done there is beyond any moral norm - to exploit women and children, the biggest treasure of any nation, and put them on the front line of a confrontation with the strongest power of the world." Mr Farrand said evidence that the Brcko riots were preplanned would be presented to the authorities once an investigation was completed.
"There is no doubt in my mind, and we have both anecdotal and clear evidence that what happened in Brcko was orchestrated, planned from the beginning," he said. "The people were manipulated in a terrible way."
Brcko is located at a bottleneck between the eastern and western parts of Serb- held Bosnia and its fate was so sensitive it was left unresolved at the Dayton peace conference in 1995.
On Saturday night, Ms Plavsic warned her hardline foes they would face punishment when the power struggle in Bosnian Serb territory was over.
"Their biggest punishment would be their conscience, if they had one. Since they do not have one, they will be punished once all this over," she said after a visit to her headquarters by US Bosnia envoy, Mr Robert Gelbard.
Mr Gelbard, on a one-day visit to shore up the crumbling Dayton peace accords and stem mounting violence, gave measured support to Ms Plavsic and heaped scorn on her hardline rivals.
NATO ambassadors, meeting in Brussels at the weekend, expressed determination to pursue the peace process in Bosnia and stressed that NATO-led troops there would not attempts to intimidate them.
After discussions which centred on the recent violence, the NATO Council said it had authorised SFOR to provide support for moves to silence media which incited violence.