By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 23, 1998; Page A01

U.S. and allied military forces abruptly shelved plans for an operation late last summer to capture Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb president indicted for war crimes, after Washington discovered that a senior French military officer had held secret meetings with Karadzic, according to senior U.S. and diplomatic officials.

The series of clandestine meetings convinced U.S. officials that key details of the arrest plans might have been leaked directly to the fugitive Serb leader by the officer, a French Army major named Herve Gourmillon, jeopardizing the operation and the lives of NATO troops.

French officials later acknowledged that the meetings occurred, but said the officer was acting on his own and promised he would be court-martialed. But although the officer has been transferred to Paris, no punishment has been meted out against him, and Washington learned recently that none is planned.

Several senior U.S. officials said the episode has left them wary of trusting the French military to cooperate fully in any future secret operation to capture Karadzic. Such cooperation has been considered essential, since the French directly command the NATO troops that patrol in the town of Pale, where Karadzic is now believed to reside.

"It ripped open a big gap in relations with the French" in Bosnia, and forced NATO to suspend a major operation that would have involved hundreds of heavily armed soldiers in an assault against Karadzic's security forces, said one official. "They were quite close to carrying it out," having determined how to arrange the capture and which troops would be involved, a diplomatic official said.

Another senior official said he found the episode "despicable and appalling" and said "no trust" remains between the U.S. and French military forces, a development that has led Washington to end virtually all consultations with the French about the possible capture of indicted war criminals.

The dispute underscores some of the international tensions surrounding the question of whether and when NATO forces should attempt to capture Karadzic and others indicted for perpetrating wartime abuses in Bosnia. Western political officials have long claimed the arrests are essential to implementing a 1995 peace accord and promoting regional stability.

Until now, Western governments, including the United States, have sought to blunt criticism about the failure to capture the most prominent alleged war criminals by claiming that they have little or no information about their whereabouts. But numerous officials said in recent interviews that this claim is largely false, and that Western military officials have long known where virtually all of the alleged criminals are.

They said the inaction was really due to other causes, including a need to conduct exhaustive preparations and a general reluctance by top military commanders to undertake potentially risky operations. Several U.S. officials said, for example, that the Pentagon has been reluctant to participate in additional operations until Congress approves funds to extend the U.S. military deployment in Bosnia beyond June -- a vote expected in coming weeks.

Despite protestations that catching war criminals is not principally the responsibility of the estimated 8,000 U.S. troops in Bosnia, the Clinton administration's keen attention to the issue is demonstrated by the fact that the CIA's Bosnia task force has produced classified maps at regular intervals since 1996 that specify the Bosnian towns where most of the indictees reside.

The CIA's information indicates that 11 war criminals are within the sector controlled by British military forces, four are within the sector controlled by U.S. forces, and six are within the sector controlled by French forces. The maps do not spell out the exact addresses where they live or places they frequently visit, however.

Several officials said that, with the exception of the aborted plan to capture Karadzic last year, NATO's overall strategy has been to concentrate on "plucking low-hanging fruit," or capturing those war criminals that have the least protection and the most predictable daily routines. In the past nine months, British and Dutch special forces have arrested five war criminals and slain another in the British sector, and U.S. special forces have captured one of the indictees known to reside in the U.S. sector. Washington also pressured Croatian officials to surrender 10 indictees from Bosnia.

The 9,000 French troops in Bosnia have yet to attempt a single capture, a record that has provoked critical editorials in French newspapers and caused an estimated 70,000 French citizens to sign two petitions in the last month demanding a more aggressive effort. "The press and most of the people are on the side of 'let's act,' " former French minister of justice Robert Badinter said in a telephone interview. The lack of action by all Western powers is "a distressing policy that has been carried on too long," he said.

Three U.S. officials said France's wariness was exemplified early last month when a Serb named Dragoljub Kunarac, indicted in June 1996 on charges of "gang rape, torture, and enslavement" of Muslim women, first offered to surrender to French military forces in the town of Pilipovic in eastern Bosnia.

Nearly a week passed before the French concluded that "they couldn't avoid taking his surrender," said one U.S. official, who said Washington has evidence the French military command deferred to several senior officials in the Bosnian Serb government. Only after the Serbs gave their private approval was Kunarac taken into custody and transferred by the French to the Hague, the officials said.

A senior U.S. official said France's inaction may be partly due to the trauma experienced by the French military command in May 1995, when Serb forces captured dozens of French officers employed as observers by the United Nations and chained them to bridges or radar sites that were prospective NATO bombing targets. "They want no repeat of this . . . [and therefore] no involvement with war criminals at all," said the official, who like other sources spoke on condition that he not be named.

Gourmillon, the army major at the center of Washington's ire, was the French military's principal liaison officer to the Serbs within his military sector and operated out of the French military headquarters just outside the city of Mostar in central Bosnia. His meetings with Karadzic occurred over a lengthy period in 1997, and were discovered by Washington after someone tipped U.S. intelligence officials, according to several sources.

At a minimum, the meetings were a violation of NATO's policy of shunning any official contact with indicted war criminals such as Karadzic, a garrulous and charismatic psychiatrist and poet who served as president of the Bosnian Serb government in Pale until 1996 and allegedly ordered or tolerated some of the worst atrocities of the 1992-1995 ethnic war.

Western officials have vowed that Karadzic will eventually stand trial before the international war crimes tribunal in the Hague on charges in two indictments, one issued in July 1995 for abuses of Muslim civilians by the Serb military and one issued in November 1995 for his alleged involvement in ordering the slaughter of thousands of Muslim refugees fleeing the town of Srebrenica.

The officials declined to provide details of the operation that was planned last year, but said that the discovery of Gourmillon's meetings with Karadzic immediately provoked suspicions that the purpose was to help Karadzic evade capture. "We know, definitely, that he passed information about NATO operations related to efforts to eventually get Karadzic," a senior U.S. official said, without offering details.

The decision to suspend the attempted capture was reportedly made by U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, who concluded that the French contact with Karadzic could have exposed Western forces to undue risk by "stripping away" their defenses against a Serb counterattack, according to another official. Clark demanded an explanation for the contacts from the French military leadership, which responded that the meetings had indeed taken place but without authorization from the Defense Ministry in Paris.

But U.S. officials say this claim was undercut when the French government later acknowledged that memoranda summarizing the meetings had been written by Gourmillon and transmitted to his superiors. "It is perplexing," one official said.

French officials declined to comment yesterday on the case. Aides to President Jacques Chirac and Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine referred inquiries to the Defense Ministry, which did not respond to telephone calls seeking comment.

U.S. officials say that even though Karadzic has worked assiduously to avoid capture, NATO intelligence experts "are still capable in general of determining where he is." They dismissed a series of recent news reports that he has fled Bosnia's Serb Republic, and say that in recent months, he has been shuttling during the night among seven homes and apartments in the former ski resort village of Pale, as well as several hideouts elsewhere in the eastern portion of the republic.

One of Karadzic's quarters is reportedly located in the former Famos engine factory that still serves as headquarters for his political party; another is located behind the Panorama Hotel, a wartime headquarters for the Serb leadership; a third is an apartment near the center of Pale that is owned by his daughter, and a fourth is a house in the nearby village of Breznik.

"The air over the Famos factory must be worn out" from helicopter and drone flights, said one U.S. official privy to the continuing reconnaissance operation. In a further attempt at intimidation, NATO troops occasionally have followed his wife and daughter while they drive around town, prompting their vocal complaints.

With a Western-orchestrated squeeze on Karadzic's finances, the size of Karadzic's security force has dwindled from roughly 80 people at any given time to just a few dozen or so, several officials said. But they are armed with grenade launchers and automatic weapons and have access to a small fleet of armored vehicles.

Washington has meanwhile secured a private pledge by the prime minister of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, who is visiting Washington this week, that Karadzic will no longer be allowed to travel to Montenegro. Karadzic was born in a mountain village in Montenegro and last year he reportedly visited his mother and other relatives in the republic. Milorad Dodik, the newly-elected president of Bosnia's Serb republic, has also given NATO his assurances that Karadzic's capture will not provoke civil unrest.

Jacques Klein, an American diplomat who is the deputy high representative of the international community in Bosnia, said he believes the failure to capture Karadzic is "an albatross, a poisoned flower" that has slowed the rebuilding process. "If Karadzic were gone, and that criminal element were gone in Pale, the whole atmosphere in the eastern Republic Srpska would change."

Bosnia's War Criminals

The U.S. government has known since at least January 1997 where most of the Bosnian war criminals still at large reside, according to classified maps prepared by the CIA for senior U.S. officials. This map draws on the CIA conclusions to show the known locations of the war criminals.

1998 surrenders and arrests:

Jan. 22: U.S. forces arrest Goran Jelisic, a Serb.

Feb. 14: Milan Simic and Miroslav Tadic, both Serbs, surrender in U.S. sector.

Feb. 24: Simo Zaric, a Serb, surrenders in U.S. sector.

March 4: Dragoljub Kunarac, a Serb, surrenders to French.

April 8: British arrest Mladen Radic and Miroslav Kavacka, both Serbs.

April 16: Zoran Zigic, a Serb, surrenders in British sector.

SOURCE: U.S. government