WASHINGTON — The United States would support the use of NATO troops to defend the president of Bosnia's Serb republic, Biljana Plavsic, if Bosnian Serb hard-liners try to topple her by force, senior officials said Thursday.
"If there's an attempt to overthrow her, NATO forces are there and will not allow it to happen," special envoy Richard Holbrooke said in an interview.
Another official said: "SFOR [the NATO-led peacekeeping force] has broad authority to protect the peace process . . . and preventing a coup would seem to come under that. If the circumstances warrant, SFOR might find itself in that position."
U.S. officials said the NATO allies have been fully in accord with the U.S. policy of backing Plavsic over her Bosnian Serb rivals, and one said the Clinton administration did not anticipate any European objections to using NATO troops to defend her against a coup.
Officials added that any decision to send North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops into a confrontation between the two Bosnian Serb factions would be made by commanders on the ground and would depend on the risks involved.
But the unusual signal of U.S. willingness to use military force in the struggle among Bosnian Serb leaders was a clear indication that the administration is fully committed to its new strategy of supporting Plavsic and reducing the power of her rival, war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.
NATO troops will continue to aid efforts to transfer the control of police forces, broadcast media and other levers of power in Republika Srpska, the Serb-controlled half of Bosnia-Herzegovina, to Plavsic's government, the officials said.
The struggle over control of police stations in several northern Bosnian towns led Thursday to a violent confrontation between NATO troops and hard-line Bosnian Serb demonstrators in the crossroads city of Brcko, and at least two U.S. soldiers were injured.
"There is a serious risk of violence in this process, and today's episodes were a foretaste of that," a White House official said Thursday. "But the risk of letting the Pale [hard-line] faction remain entrenched . . . is far greater."
Administration officials described the growing split between Bosnian Serb factions as "a moment of truth" in a U.S.-led effort to enforce the 1995 Dayton, Ohio, peace accord, which called on Serbs, Croats and Muslims to live together in a loosely federated Bosnia.
