Albright Blasts Bosnian Serbs Secretary Demands End To Serb Separatism, Wants Surrender Of Suspected War Criminals

Venturing boldly into the one-time centers of Serb “ethnic cleansing,” U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright Sunday demanded that Bosnian Serbs in effect give up their dream of an ethnically pure republic and hand over the former leaders who tried to bring it about.

“Make no mistake,” she said in Brcko, site of a major death camp and several smaller installations, “a price will be paid for the atrocities committed here. Until it is paid by those who perpetrated the crimes, it will be paid by those who protect them.”

At a ceremony to reopen a bridge between Bosnia and Croatia, she pointed out a nearby building, the Hotel Posavina, where non-Serb civilians in 1992 had been “beaten, tortured and raped in the cause of ethnic purity.”

Then she flew to Banja Luka, the biggest Serb-controlled city in the “Republica Srpska” and hub of a network of concentration camps where thousands of civilians were killed.

She charged the self-governing Serb entity over which President Biljana Plavsic nominally presides had an “especially poor” record on refugee return, had “completely reneged” in its commitment to reduce heavy weapons and was regularly setting up illegal roadblocks.

As for war criminals, Srpska had “the worst record” of any government in the region, she said. But Albright said she had made the trip out of respect for Plavsic, and offered to invest millions of dollars in housing construction if Srpska would agree to resettle non-Serb refugees. Plavsic agreed to reconsider her previous rejection.

Albright was the highest-level U.S. official to visit the ethnically “pure” republic, and the first top aide to lay down mandates that in effect will defeat the notion of an ethnically pure republic, demanding the return of Muslims and Croats, and creation of a multiethnic entity.

The secretary of state did not indicate how the U.S. government would achieve these ambitious goals in this impoverished and half-destroyed country, but there were small signs of progress at the end of a two-day barnstorming tour of the Balkans.

After her request to Croatian president Franjo Tudjman on Saturday, Croatia opened a bridge to northeastern Bosnia Sunday that had been closed since 1992.

At the ceremony in Brcko, Zlatko Mateja, the Croatian prime minister, responded positively to Albright’s outspoken criticism of Croatia one day earlier, underscoring “our full support to you and to President Clinton for the full implementation” of the U.S.-sponsored Dayton agreement. And in Banja Luka, Plavsic gave Albright a surprisingly friendly reception, causing her to stay an hour longer than planned.