NATO Seizes Serb Faction's Police Station

SARAJEVO, Bosnia, Nov. 10—NATO-led peacekeeping troops seized a Bosnian Serb special police station today in a move intended to punish hard-line Serb nationalists on the eve of important local elections.

The special police, who act as bodyguards and paramilitary troops, put up no resistance to the 50 or so Danish troops who entered the five-story building about 9:30 a.m. in Doboj, 75 miles north of Sarajevo in the Serb-controlled part of Bosnia.

In the course of the day, the Danes, backed by at least 200 other peacekeeping troops stationed nearby -- Finns, Swedes and Poles -- stripped 66 Serb police officers of their badges and confiscated their weapons, ammunition, vehicles, radio equipment and files.

The Stabilization Force for Bosnia has repeatedly demanded an explanation of why the commander of the Doboj special police unit and four of his men were involved in a clash with a rival political faction two months ago in the western city of Banja Luka. It was the Serbs' failure to respond to those demands that prompted today's action, NATO spokesmen said.

Moreover, the Doboj special police are loyal to hard-liners grouped around the Bosnian Serb Republic's former president, Radovan Karadzic, and are bitterly opposed to the U.S.-brokered peace process in Bosnia. And since police are one of the key levers of power in the Balkans, today's move appeared designed to loosen the hard-liners' grip on Doboj, one of Bosnia's largest Serb-held cities.

It may also have the effect of strengthening the hand of Karadzic's successor and political rival, Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic. Plavsic, although also an ardent nationalist, enjoys Western support in her power struggle with Karadzic because she publicly acknowledges a need to abide by the Dayton peace agreement that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 conflict.

Parliamentary elections in the Serb-controlled half of Bosnia are scheduled for Nov. 22-23, and two of the main parties battling with each other for voter support are loyal to Plavsic and Karadzic.

Based in Banja Luka, Plavsic and her allies openly covet control of Doboj and other key Bosnian Serb towns and cities farther east. Last month, they sent a large police contingent to try to seize a rival police headquarters just north of Doboj in the town of Derventa. The group was stopped on the highway by police loyal to Karadzic, and the two sides were locked in a tense pre-dawn standoff for hours.

Some Western military officials cautioned that the peacekeepers' move against the hard-liners today was risky, not least because it could leave a power vacuum in Doboj that Plavsic may try to fill with her own police. One source said he believes Western officials warned Plavsic not to attempt to send her own men to replace the Doboj special police for fear it would spark a bloodbath.

The special police are a holdover from the prewar era in communist Yugoslavia, when they were often referred to as political police and were used to suppress and intimidate dissidents.

The Stabilization Force commander, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Eric Shinseki, said three months ago that the Bosnian Serb special police would have to disband or face arrest. That announcement was treated as a significant policy shift, but it was not until today that NATO forces took forceful action against the special police.

The peacekeeping force requires that any Bosnian military or special police movements be cleared with NATO commanders in advance. But when the five special police officers in Doboj traveled to Banja Luka in early September as bodyguards for Serb politician Momcilo Krajisnik, a hard-line ally of Karadzic, they failed to report their movements.

They ended up trapped with dozens of other hard-liners in a Banja Luka hotel that was besieged by Plavsic supporters. After hours of negotiation, 72 of Krajisnik's men were evacuated from the hotel under the protection of peacekeeping troops.