U.S. Mulling a Special War Crimes Force

WASHINGTON — The United States and its key allies are considering a paramilitary force to capture suspected war criminals in Bosnia-Herzegovina who remain free in defiance of court indictments and an international peace accord, White House and European officials said Monday.

The Clinton administration sees the capture of indicted war crimes suspects and their trial before the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague as important steps toward stability in the Balkans. They are also seen as vital to preserving the credibility of the tribunal, which has managed to lay its hands on only a few of those so far indicted.

Although the proposal for the paramilitary force came from the United States--where it has been pushed mainly in the White House and the State Department--it has received only lukewarm response from European allies.

It also would probably meet with a less-than-enthusiastic response in the Pentagon and in Congress, where some would view it as a dangerous expansion of the allied mission that would put U.S. troops at risk.

Speaking at a routine briefing Monday, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry called the idea of such a force “an option that is under consideration.”

“We haven’t made a decision on whether that’s the best way to help” the war crimes tribunal, “but it does suggest itself as an option,” McCurry said.

The United States and a small number of European allies reportedly have been studying the idea of creating the force for about two months, and those efforts remain at a relatively early stage, according to one European official familiar with the project.

“All the questions raised by such a force--questions like what it looks like, how you get it on the ground, who it answers to, what else it can do, whose intelligence it operates with--are now on the table, but it hasn’t gone much beyond that so far,” the official said.

The 74 men who stand formally accused of genocide and other crimes against humanity and yet remain free in Bosnia include former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and his senior military commander, Ratko Mladic. Both men travel with a large, heavily armed retinue and have let it be known that they would resist any attempt to arrest them.

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who as ambassador to the United Nations pushed hard for the creation of the tribunal, almost certainly would support bold efforts to seize the accused war criminals.

Both Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman John M. Shalikashvili and outgoing Defense Secretary William J. Perry in December publicly endorsed the idea of looking into a special force. But privately, Defense Department officials express reservations.

They worry that attempts to grab war crimes suspects will heighten tensions and dangerously complicate the job of thousands of U.S. soldiers serving in Bosnia with the Stabilization Force, or SFOR. For them, the debacle of Somalia, where 18 U.S. Army Rangers died in an abortive attempt to chase down a local warlord, remains a powerful reminder of how explosive such a task can be.

Capitol Hill sources also expressed reservations, in part because any additional force would effectively be an extension of the international mission in the Balkans.

One congressional aide predicted that SWAT teams created to snatch war crimes suspects would “ring alarm bells” in Congress. “It takes us into new areas and could cause a situation that brings in SFOR, and that’s full-blown mission creep,” he said.

Under terms of the U.S.-brokered Dayton, Ohio, peace accord, local authorities in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia are supposed to take the accused into custody and arrange for them to go to The Hague for trial, but this has not happened.

SFOR troops deployed to enforce the Dayton accord also have standing orders to arrest the accused criminals they encounter. But it has become clear that unit commanders want no part of such a mission, claiming it could seriously compromise their primary goal of implementing the agreement and stabilizing the region.