Karadzic's arrest not to weaken Serbia's ruling coalition, agency says
BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - July 24, 2008, Thursday

Text of report in English by Serbian weekly news agency Beta Week service

[BETA Commentary: "The New Government's First Test"]

By arresting Radovan Karadzic, former Bosnian Serb political leader, the new Serbian government has made the biggest step toward rounding off its cooperation with the Hague tribunal since the 2001 arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, convinced that this move is not going to entail any serious political crisis.

Karadzic was arrested after being in hiding for 13 years. This happened in Belgrade, where he apparently has been residing for some time under an assumed name.

The government, bringing together Serbia's pro-democracy forces and the Socialist Party of Serbia, has obviously planned the operation thoroughly, while its public announcements have been carefully calibrated to avoid any major protests by ultranationalists over such "treachery." The extradition procedure will probably be over by the end of the week, and during the next weekend Karadzic might well find himself in the Hague tribunal's detention unit.

Karadzic was arrested only two weeks after the forming of the government, whose members come from a number of groups with completely different stances toward the Hague court. The Socialists tried to distance themselves from the operation, but the arrest has not caused any turmoil inside the ruling coalition. Obviously, it was carried out in close cooperation with the Socialist party, being a part of the negotiations preceding the forming of the government.

Karadzic's arrest is a sign of a new balance of forces in the Serbian security structures over which President Boris Tadic and his Democratic Party now wield full control. In the previous government, most of them (the Interior Ministry, the Security and Information Agency) were controlled by former Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica's Democratic Party of Serbia. Karadzic was arrested only four days after the Security and Information Agency got its new chief, Sasa Vukadinovic. Vukadinovic was proposed for the post by the Democratic Party, replacing Rade Bulatovic, one of Kostunica's closest allies, who had been in charge of the former secret police service for years.

It is very unlikely that the new head of the Security and Information Agency should get any credit for the arrest of one of the most wanted Hague court indictees. But with Vukadinovic's appointment the agency is now run by the pro-European forces.

Sources well-informed of security conditions in Belgrade say that the information of Karadzic's whereabouts was already on record in the agency, but that the agency acted upon it only when Vukadinovic took over and when the organization's strategic goals changed.

The Serbian Interior Ministry has denied playing any part in the arrest. The ministry, led by Socialist party leader Ivica Dacic, issued an announcement less than an hour after the arrest was made public. The official press release on the arrest came form the National Security Council, chaired by President Tadic, but Dacic is also a council member. The announcement was actually intended for Socialist party supporters and it challenged the arrest operation in no way.

In the Karadzic case Dacic had a difficult task of officially washing his hands of any responsibility for the arrest in front of the party that for years has supported the policy of war in Bosnia and afterward openly sided with the opponents of the Hague court labelling it as "anti-Serb. " Dacic said that the arrest of the former Bosnian Serb leader was the consequence of "transition in government" and that the Socialists have not contributed to it in any way.

The situation, of course, is quite different. There are indications that in the period that had elapsed from the time Karadzic was located and the moment of his actual arrest, the Socialists had an opportunity to devise a plan how they would respond. A part of this plan was a decision of Parliament Speaker Slavica Djukic-Dejanovic, from the Socialist party, to adjourn the Parliament for two weeks on July 21. The opposition was thus deprived of an opportunity to take the floor for unlimited time to criticize the government for "treachery" and possibly provoke incidents.

The Opposition

The adjournment of the session has caught both the MPs and the public by surprise, being passed without usual consultations with caucuses. The biggest opposition parties - the Serbian Radical Party and the Democratic Party of Serbia - were obviously taken aback by the arrest.

In the evening of July 21, after the news about Karadzic's arrest was made public, only several dozen soccer club fans and supporters of the rightist Obraz movement gathered in downtown Belgrade to protest. Strong police forces were deployed throughout the city and no incidents took place. On July 22 the Radicals organized a protest rally in downtown Belgrade at which Radical party Secretary General Aleksandar Vucic spoke, but only several hundred protesters gathered. Strong police forces were present, there were clashes but they weren't serious, and several demonstrators were taken in by the police. There were no serious incidents on that day either.

This was in complete opposition to what happened in Belgrade on Feb. 21, after Kosovo declared independence. The protest rally scheduled for that day turned into an attack against foreign embassies, and many stores and offices in downtown Belgrade were demolished and looted. A belated response by the police and the likely "assistance" of secret services in the incidents have contributed to the violence and political tensions in the country that followed.

No serious political turmoil should be expected in Serbia at the moment, and the newly-fangled coalition of the pro-European parties and the Socialists will continue to strengthen its alliance. Its next opportunity will be the election of Belgrade's mayor, planned for next week, which should bring to an end the forming of government in the capital city.

Positive messages coming from the EU and the West, announcing that Serbia's integration into Europe will be speeded up, will help strengthen the alliance. Belgrade has two more tasks to complete: to arrest the second most wanted Hague court fugitive, Gen. Ratko Mladic, commander of the Bosnian Serb forces during the war, who is probably also hiding in Serbia, and to locate and take in Goran Hadzic. The apprehension of the latter was hindered at the last moment last year, most likely thanks to a tip coming from the security services.

Source: Beta Week, Belgrade, in English 24 Jul 08
Posted for Fair Use only.