A RISKY POWER PLAY

By DOUGLAS WALLER

Remember the name Biljana Plavsic. She is the little-known President of Republika Srpska, the truculent Serb statelet that is supposed to cooperate in a "unified" Bosnia but doesn't, and she could be the key to U.S. policy's succeeding there. During the past two months, she has enlisted the Clinton Administration and NATO's 35,000 peacekeeping soldiers to her side in a power struggle with indicted war criminal and Serb strongman Radovan Karadzic. By intervening directly on her behalf two weeks ago, the U.S.-led NATO alliance stepped out of its neutral role and straight into its own risky power play.

The dangers of such a strategy were manifest last Thursday. Early that morning, policemen loyal to Karadzic attempted to oust the police chief of the strategic town of Brcko, who had declared himself loyal to Plavsic. U.S. troops were along to protect him and prevent an outbreak of violence. Instead they were met by angry mobs who hurled rocks, eggs and two-by-fours after Karadzic allies sounded sirens in Brcko and spread the news that NATO wanted to occupy the town. Two U.S. soldiers were slightly wounded, and troops were forced to fire into the air and use tear gas to drive the crowds back. The attempted takeover of crucial centers of power such as Brcko showed how hostile and violent the struggle to get Karadzic could be.

The political risks are no less hazardous. Rather than succeed in winning control of the Bosnian Serb entity, Plavsic could split it in two, atomizing even further a country fractured into rival enclaves. Her will to live up to the troubled 1995 Dayton peace accord is regarded with considerable skepticism, and her ability to deliver on the treaty's difficult provisions is suspect. Yet Washington officials say that they think her commitment is real and that she has evolved from a puppet President into a leader ready to challenge the diehards. In any case, she offers the best available opportunity for salvaging the peace.

The change in American and allied policy from studied neutrality to siding with her in internal Bosnian Serb politics is due wholly to Plavsic. She cemented that choice last month in her presidential palace in downtown Banja Luka, the largest Serb city in Bosnia. She had committed herself in general terms to carrying out the Dayton agreement, but American envoys Robert Gelbard and Richard Holbrooke wanted to know how far Plavsic would really go. "I'm a nationalist, but I'm a democrat," she said. She was ready to break with Karadzic, her longtime mentor, and join hands with NATO. Holbrooke was worried by the word nationalist, which sparked the 1992-95 war. "What I want to know," he replied, "is, Are you a separatist still?" She looked him in the eye and said, "No. I support Dayton, and I support one country." With that, Holbrooke told TIME, "she crossed the Rubicon," and the U.S. was prepared to do what it could to help her prevail.

Plavsic, 67, is hardly a model ally for the West. Described by friends as a cosmopolitan Ph.D. during her early years in Sarajevo, the former biology professor turned into a rabid Serb nationalist as Yugoslavia began breaking up in 1990. Along with Karadzic, she was an early leader of the separatist Serb Democratic Party, and she served as his Vice President during the three-year war. Soon nicknamed the Iron Lady, Plavsic became "infected with war insanity," said Vitali Churkin, a former Russian envoy to Bosnia.

She openly supported ethnic cleansing, which eventually resulted in the killing of an estimated 150,000 Muslims; more than half a million others were driven from their homes. "I'd like to see eastern Bosnia completely cleansed of Muslims," she told an interviewer in 1993.

But Plavsic was "a fairly honest fanatic," says an experienced Western official in Sarajevo. While Karadzic and his top aides grew rich off the war's black market, strutting about in expensive suits and driving flashy Mercedes, Plavsic stuck to matronly flower-print dresses and drove a green Volkswagen.

Her growing popularity among war-weary Serbs today comes from her personal honesty and her willingness to stand up against the profiteering of the Karadzic clique. When she took over the Bosnian Serb Republic's presidency a year ago after the U.S. forced Karadzic to resign, she saw firsthand how deep the corruption ran. Karadzic and his allies still controlled the police, the media and the state-run businesses, which are the republic's key political institutions. "During the war, I was aware that many things were done in an illegal way," Plavsic said. "I justified it with the circumstances of war. I thought peace would bring another attitude and another way of running a state."

While Karadzic and his cronies have been amassing fortunes, the republic's 900,000 citizens have grown poorer. Unemployment in parts of the Bosnian Serb Republic remains as high as 80%; only 3% of international aid has gone to the Bosnian Serbs, because the Pale hard-liners have refused to carry out Dayton's provisions. Plavsic, who once opposed the treaty, says she realizes that the only way Bosnian Serbs can "reach full economic progress" and survive is to not fight the accord.

Her campaign to wrest full control from Karadzic still has a long, dangerous way to go. Plavsic "is doomed to failure," warns Karadzic ally Momcilo Krajisnik, the Serb member of Bosnia's collective presidency. But momentum has begun shifting her way since British commandos killed a suspected war criminal and captured another in a gun battle in July. Last month NATO peacekeepers helped Plavsic evict pro-Karadzic cops from police stations in Banja Luka and nearby towns. And the number of Plavsic supporters grows day by day with senior Serb Democratic Party members, mayors, army officers and police chiefs pledging their support.

Though Karadzic was able to block Plavsic from taking over more police stations last week, U.S. officials believe NATO has enough firepower to quell armed opposition from Pale while she gradually extends her control. The greater danger will be what Washington ends up with if Plavsic succeeds. She may be as obstreperous as her Pale rivals on the treaty's two most contentious provisions: the return of Muslim refugees to their homes and the extradition of indicted war criminals. But Washington is far behind in achieving the treaty's goal of a unified Bosnia before U.S. peacekeepers are scheduled to leave next summer, and no closer to the cherished goal of bringing Karadzic to the court of justice in the Hague. Backing Plavsic is a gamble, but in the quagmire of Republika Srpska, admits a State Department official, "there don't seem to be alternatives. She's the only one who's stepped up to the plate."

--With reporting by Massimo Calabresi/Sarajevo and Alexandra Stiglmayer/Banja Luka

With reporting by MASSIMO CALABRESI/SARAJEVO AND ALEXANDRA STIGLMAYER/BANJA LUKA