In early April French troops stormed the house of Momcilo Krajisnik and arrested him. Krajisnik, a high-ranking Bosnian Serb politician, who served under Radovan Karadzic, now faces trial before an international war crimes tribunal at The Hague.

Krajisnik is being charged with responsibility for the killings of thousands of Muslims and the raping of women in the mid-1990s during the brutal military onslaught carried out by the Belgrade regime against people living in Bosnia.

An April 10 New York Times article comments, "Western governments... find it more politically convenient to have their [UN] soldiers arrest important suspects like camp commanders and Bosnian Serb and Croat generals." It scored the French government for "providing a defacto safe haven for key suspects in their sector of Bosnia." There are currently 39 people being detained by the tribunal.

The description of Krajisnik's arrest gives an insight into the freedom the imperialist military forces have in the country and the near impunity with which they act when they make a decision to do so.

On April 3 at least a dozen NATO troops in the French-controlled southern sector of Bosnia surrounded Krajisnik's house in Pale, just southeast of Sarajevo. Troops blew open the door with explosives and dragged Krajisnik away barefooted in pajamas. "If they had only rung the bell I would have opened the door, but they threw a bomb," said Krajisnik's 80-year-old father.

His family was tied up and held at gunpoint during the raid. The children claim they heard English-speaking troops, but London has denied any involvement in the arrest. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Richard Holbrooke called the arrest "possibly the most important day since the Dayton agreement in Bosnia," pointing out that Krajisnik was the last major opponent to the agreement.

Bosnia has been divided up into three basic parts: the northwestern third controlled by London, the northeastern piece by Washington, and the southern part by Paris.

Referring to the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia, a tribunal official pushing for deeper intervention was quoted in the Christian Science Monitor as saying, "We would like SFOR and NATO to take a more proactive role...and set up a special task force that could work anywhere in Bosnia."

The April 17 issue of the military newspaper Daily Southdown reports that army personnel have been deployed to Tuzla, Bosnia, to participate in Operation Joint Forge, a NATO-led occupying force that reportedly involves 19 countries.  
 
 
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