By Colin Soloway
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, December 19, 1997; Page A43

SARAJEVO, Bosnia, Dec. 18—Dutch troops from the NATO-led peacekeeping force captured two Bosnian Croat war crimes suspects in central Bosnia early today. They were later handed over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal for trial.

The lightning pre-dawn raids, the most dramatic since British troops seized a Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect and killed another in July, prompted protests by angry local Croats but were welcomed by Western governments as a strong message to other indicted war crimes suspects in Bosnia that they cannot continue to move about without fear of arrest.

One suspect, Vlatko Kupreskic, 39, was shot three times after he fired on Dutch troops as they stormed his house in the village of Santici just outside the central Bosnian town of Vitez. He received emergency surgery before being flown with the other suspect, Anto Furundzija, 28, to the Netherlands, where they were handed over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

The arrests came only hours before President Clinton, who is due to visit Bosnia on Monday, announced that U.S. troops would remain in Bosnia indefinitely as part of the NATO-led force. The operation could cool, at least temporarily, a long-running feud between NATO commanders, who have been reluctant to take on indicted war crimes suspects for fear of casualties and retaliation, and the war crimes tribunal, which argues that peace cannot take hold in Bosnia until those accused of ethnic cleansing, rape and murder have been brought to justice.

As word of the arrests spread through the town, Croats in Vitez blocked main roads, and local Croat radio called on residents to march to Kupreskic's house to protest the NATO action. The crowds dispersed after the Dutch troops finished searching the two suspects' homes. NATO and U.N. international police forces reported no violence and said Vitez was quiet this evening.

Following a similar operation by British troops against two Serb war crimes suspects in the town of Prijedor on July 10, NATO troops and international officials were subjected to two weeks of attacks. While spokesmen would not comment on security precautions, other officers said that peacekeeping troops in ethnic Croat areas of Bosnia would be at a heightened state of alert.

Bosnian radio broadcast a statement from the NATO-led peacekeeping force urging Croats to remain calm.

NATO Secretary General Javier Solana telephoned Croatian President Franjo Tudjman to urge him to help head off any Bosnian Croat retaliation, the Reuters news agency reported.

U.N. spokesman Alexander Ivanko described Furundzija as a local commander of a Bosnian Croat paramilitary unit known as the "Jokers," who took part in the massacre of Muslim civilians in Ahmici and other villages in the Vitez area of the Lasva Valley at the beginning of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat war in April 1993.

He was charged with being present at the interrogation of two prisoners in May 1993, when one was raped and the other beaten. Furundzija was named in a sealed, secret indictment in November 1995.

Kupreskic was named in an open indictment along with two of his cousins, Zoran and Mirjan Kupreskic, and 12 other Croats, for the massacre in Ahmici in which 103 Muslims, including 33 women and children, were killed. Kupreskic is charged with the murder of a Muslim woman, Fata Pezer, and the wounding of her daughter, Dzenana.

Ten of the 15, including Kupreskic's cousins, turned themselves in to tribunal officials on Oct. 6. Only two Croats wanted for crimes in the Lasva Valley are still at large -- Stipo Alilovic and Zoran Marinic.

The war crimes tribunal has publicly indicted 78 suspects -- 57 Serbs, 18 Croats and three Muslims. Two have been convicted and sentenced, and 18 more are in the tribunal's custody.

More than 50 are still at large, including the two most powerful Bosnian Serbs -- former president Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Ratko Mladic.

Western officials hailed the arrests of the two Croats.

"Today's action again demonstrates that [war crimes suspects] have nowhere to hide," British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said in London, the Associated Press reported.