Post-Soviet Media Law & Policy Newsletter

THE STRUGGLE FOR MEDIA CONTROL IN REPUBLIKA SRPSKA
I. Planes for Jamming Broadcasts Head for Bosnia, Balkans.

By Tracy Wilkinson and Stanley Meisler

    The United States announced September 12 that it has dispatched to Bosnia electronic warplanes that can jam the vitriolic, anti-West radio and television broadcasts of hard-line Serbs and replace them with alternative programming.
    Three Air Force EC-130 planes reached Brindisi Air Base in Italy on Saturday, the first day of the weekend’s tense, ethnically charged municipal elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but they were not “fully operational” until Monday, a Pentagon spokesman said.
    The planes were sent to Bosnia, the spokesman said, because followers of indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic had reneged on promises to eliminate violence-inciting broadcasts and air opposition voices. The promises were made last week when US troops returned a Karadzic-controlled television transmitter that they had seized.
    Dispatch of the aircraft follows weeks of debate among international officials on how far to go in cracking down on the Bosnian Serb Radio and Television network, SRT, which is controlled by Karadzic from his mountain-village headquarters of Pale outside Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital. And it follows a series of violent clashes between Karadzic loyalists and NATO-led forces.
    The hard-liners have used SRT to attack NATO-led peacekeepers as an occupying force likened to the Nazi SS and to rail against Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic, who is backed by the West as she attempts to wrest power from Karadzic and his supporters. She is frequently portrayed as a puppet of Washington and referred to as a renegade and traitor.
    The elite EC-130 aircraft, which were used in similar psychological operations in Haiti and Somalia, were ready to transmit “a fair and balanced report of news and information” to Bosnia, the Pentagon spokesman said.
    The planes’ dispatch coincides with the sternest media warning yet to the Bosnian Serbs. US Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, commander of NATO-led troops in Bosnia, and the senior civilian peacekeeper in Bosnia, Carlos Westendorp, gave Serb officials a 6 p.m. deadline September 12 to clean up their television and radio broadcasts.
    “Failure to comply,” they wrote in a letter sent late Wednesday and obtained by The Times, “will be followed by NATO action.”
    The language served technically as a mechanism that “triggers” military action. It was addressed to Momcilo Krajisnik, a close ally of Karadzic and the Bosnian Serb member of Bosnia’s three-person presidency.
    Under the U.S.-brokered peace accords that ended Bosnia’s war 21 months ago, media are banned from inciting racial hatred and violence, and international officials enforcing the peace are authorized to penalize or censor those who break the rules.
    But the Pale Serbs have repeatedly ignored warnings and violated agreements, international officials say.
    The last straw for U.S. officials came Aug. 28, when Karadzic-controlled radio urged Serbs living in the disputed city of Brcko to attack foreigners. That call to action came in response to U.S. NATO troops’ attempts to occupy several police stations to install forces loyal to Plavsic. Two American soldiers and several Serb citizens were wounded in the day of rioting that resulted.
    This weekend’s much-postponed municipal elections, which are regarded by Washington as a key step in rebuilding the country’s postwar institutions, have been threatened by boycotts by both the Serbs and the Bosnian Croats.
    Feverish negotiations in Zagreb, the Croatian capital, persuaded the Bosnian Croats to participate in the vote. Zagreb had come under pointed criticism from the U.S. State Department for its role in promoting the boycott.
    Meanwhile, the Bosnian Serbs, under the lead of Karadzic’s ruling Serbian Democratic Party, reneged on their boycott threat after obtaining a number of concessions from international election organizers.

Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1997

II. Serbia slams US over move to jam Bosnian Serb broadcasts.

    Serbia’s information minister blasted the United States Friday for sending radio-jamming aircraft to Bosnia, calling it an attempt to influence the outcome of this weekend’s municipal elections.
    Radmila Milentijevic also told a news conference here that the United States should not expect Serbian leaders to hand over war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.
    “If you want Dr. Karadzic, you have to go and get him,” Milentijevic said. “No respectable Serbian leader today can deliver on this issue.”
    The Defense Department announced Thursday it will send three special operations aircraft capable of jamming Serb television and radio broadcasts to Bosnia ahead of the municipal elections Saturday and Sunday.
    “This shows the Serbian people or citizens of Republika Srpska that the United States somehow feels that it has to affect the election,” Milentijevic said. “The United States should play the role of peacemaker, a role assigned to NATO through the Dayton accords.”
    Concerning Karadzic, the Serbian minister drew a parallel between Washington’s demands for his arrest and the situation in Somalia, when US troops tried to hunt down warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid in 1992.
    Voters across Bosnia-Hercegovina will cast ballots at the weekend to elect 136 municipal councils, many of which will be comprised of representatives from Moslem, Croat and Serb minorities.
    In the Bosnian Serb republic, Milentijevic predicted that “a much greater variety of people” will be elected to the local councils but “probably very few of them will take their seats effectively until such time when refugees are allowed to return,” she said.

Agence France Presse, September 12, 1997

III. Bosnian Serbs pledge to cooperate over media access to avoid jamming.

    A top Bosnian Serb leader has renewed a promise to share access to broadcast media, the State Department said Friday, in a move that may allow the United States to avoid the use of radio-jammers in Bosnia.
    In a letter to Carlos Westendorp, the international mediator for Bosnia, Bosnian Serb leader Momcilo Krajisnik “promises to respect the Udrigova agreement” and to work with officials overseeing media access, State Department spokesman James Foley said.
    NATO forces agreed on September 2 to withdraw from a television transmitter at Udrigova after Bosnian Serb leaders agreed to grant air time to opposition leaders.
    On Thursday, Westendorp wrote to the Bosnian Serbs, warning them that they faced consequences for refusing to abide by the agreement.

Agence France Presse, September 12, 1997

IV. Serbs sever links with international envoys.

[Reporter]     Sfor [NATO-led Stabilization Force] and the office of the Bosnia-Hercegovina High Representative have asked Serb Radio-Television [SRT] in Pale to implement the agreement reached after Sfor handed over the Udrigovo [northern Bosnia] transmitter to the police loyal to the Pale leadership. Zoran Zuza reports.
[Zuza]     High Representative deputy for Bosnia-Hercegovina Jacques Paul Klein and Sfor commander Gen Eric Shinseki sent a letter today [September 8th] to Momcilo Krajisnik and SRT in Pale. The letter demands 90 minutes of airtime to broadcast a program from the High Representative office this evening and 60 minutes of airtime tomorrow, while the High Representative should receive 10 minutes of airtime tonight, on Thursday [11th September] and next Saturday [13th September].
    “Each program we give you should be broadcast without any changes or editing,” the letter says, adding that the broadcast of new material will be closely monitored.
    SRT did not broadcast the video material it was given. Instead, in the Pale TV news bulletin, the reply of the extended SRT editorial board was read out, together with the above letter. In the reply, the Shinseki and Klein letter is referred to as a permanent document of an attempt to violate freedom and human rights which SRT will never accept.
    The editorial board adds that it is cutting all communication with High Representative spokesman Duncan Bullivant. It also invites the High Representative to appear live as a guest on the program and talk to journalists and the audience instead of cowardly squeezing into programs and sending ultimatums to broadcast prerecorded tapes. The statement was signed by Miroslav Toholj, SRT director-general.

Report from Radio B92, Belgrade, September 8, 1997

V. NATO Backs Down From Confrontation with Bosnian Serb Hard-liners.

By Mike O’Conner

    To the public, there is still a single voice from diplomats, foreign officials and senior NATO military officers. In public statements and press conferences, they say everything has gone pretty well. But when they are speaking privately, they say just the opposite.
    The last in what seems to be a series of steps backward happened September 2, when American troops gave up a broadcast tower to Bosnian Serb officials allied with Radovan Karadzic, the former president now indicted for war crimes. Serb officials have sent 200 or so civilians, some armed with clubs, to harass the American soldiers guarding the tower.
    The West supports Biljana Plavsic, the current president of the half of Bosnia controlled by Serbs, an area called Republika Srpska. That broadcast tower is part of the system used by Karadzic and his allies to broadcast fairly caustic propaganda against Plavsic. And recently, it has quite often broadcast appeals to confront NATO soldiers or international officials.
    According to United Nations officials, senior American officers tried to get the UN to go along with the plan, but the UN refused, saying it was too much of an intrusion into politics and was not properly thought out.
    Last Thursday, American NATO soldiers tried to install police commanders friendly to President Plavsic in three cities, but it didn’t work. In one town, Brcko, the Americans spent much of the day under attack from civilians throwing rocks and occasionally molotov cocktails.
    Now, some police and local political leaders who oppose Karadzic and who were working with the Americans have been arrested, which could make it much more difficult to organize open support for Plavsic.
    The failures also make the hard-liners look even stronger and anger many European diplomats who say the U.S. has taken over Bosnian policy and is running it badly.
    The broadcast tower, which was given back yesterday, was the only thing that was still held by NATO after its moves last week. NATO officers said they gave it back because Serb authorities agreed to bring more balance to their newscasts.
    Still, the first news program carried last night included a statement by the Bosnian Serb prime minister canceling this month’s elections, elections which Western officials say are critical to bringing democracy to Bosnia. If there are no elections to replace them, the Bosnia Serb hard-liners could stay in power.

National Public Radio, Morning Edition, September 3, 1997

VI. U.S. Troops Yield TV Transmitter to Bosnian Serbs.

By Tracy Wilkinson

    Surrounded by stick-wielding Bosnian Serbs, U.S. troops agreed to relinquish a television transmitter they had controlled to forces answering to war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.
    In exchange, the Serbs, under the direction of Karadzic ally Momcilo Krajisnik, promised to end inflammatory anti-West rhetoric and permit opposition voices on the air.
    Krajisnik, the Bosnian Serb member of the country’s three-man presidency, praised the deal as a “wise” step by NATO-led peacekeepers to avoid conflict with the Serbs. Others wondered if the Americans had blinked, having been embarrassed by last week’s bungling of a military operation to take over pro-Karadzic police stations.
    Adding insult to injury, the newly restored television transmission was used Tuesday night to cancel Serbian participation in crucial municipal elections scheduled for Sept. 13-14.
    The media and the police are the two central tools in the battle to gain and hold on to power in this part of the world.
    For the last several months, the Clinton administration has pursued a more aggressive course of action in Bosnia, signaling a determination to isolate Karadzic by promoting Plavsic. But in the last week, faced with their first military challenge, U.S. efforts have crashed—with negative consequences on military, diplomatic and political fronts.
    Plavsic, after making important gains in the northwestern portion of Republika Srpska, has lost momentum and stalled. The U.S. military has appeared weak to the Serbs, making future confrontations more likely.
    And an always precarious unity within the international peacemaking mission here has been shattered. European and other international allies believe that Washington is forcing its agenda through with little laying of political groundwork and with disregard for legal backing.
    The transmitter was crucial because it controlled television signals to key, disputed cities in Republika Srpska. With the U.S. takeover of the tower Thursday, inflammatory rhetoric that Bosnian Serb hard-liners had been using to incite violence against Western peacekeepers could not reach those cities.
    On Monday, crowds of Bosnian Serbs, bused in and directed by men with walkie-talkies, began surrounding the heavily armed U.S. troops, who encircled the transmitter and built barricades. The mobs, which swelled to around 250 people, hurled stones and insults until the troops fired tear gas to subdue the onslaught.
    Still armed with sticks and wooden clubs, and consuming plenty of plum brandy, the Serbs staged a kind of sit-in around the Americans overnight and well into Tuesday morning. They finally dispersed later Tuesday, NATO spokesmen said, after troops permitted four Bosnian Serb police officers and three technicians from Karadzic-controlled television to enter the transmitting station.
    On Tuesday night, the signal from the hard-line camp was again on the air in cities like Brcko and Bijeljina, which Plavsic and Karadzic forces continue to dispute.
    International officials said the decision to take and then surrender the transmitter came from NATO’s supreme commander, U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, who has taken an unusually hands-on approach to Bosnia since assuming the top NATO military post in July.
    The compromise was struck between Krajisnik and Clark’s representative in Bosnia, U.S. Army Gen. Eric Shinseki, in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. Krajisnik promised that the Bosnian Serb television and radio (SRT) will refrain from inflammatory language against NATO and international peacekeepers and will give an hour a day in programming time to opposition politicians. Also, the Serbs agreed to participate in a newly formed media advisory commission and give the senior civilian peacekeeping official in Bosnia air time to explain recent events.
    The hard-line Bosnian Serb leadership has signed and then ignored similar agreements in the past. On Tuesday night’s SRT news broadcast, the station’s director, Miroslav Toholj, congratulated the demonstrators who had confronted the U.S. forces at the Bijeljina transmitter, lauding their “bravery” and “defense of human rights.”
    Krajisnik, relieved that pressure seemed to be abating, said he was glad “more calm winds” prevailed.
    And on the same newscast, Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Gojko Klickovic said fraudulent voter registration that has allowed Muslims to outnumber Serbs in some Serb-held cities will prevent Bosnian Serbs from participating in the elections.

Los Angeles Times, September 3, 1997

VII. Serb official rejects transmitter takeover explanation [c.f. article IX].

    The director-general of [Bosnian] Serb Radio-TV, Miroslav Toholj, on September 3rd rejected the explanation given by Milovan Stankovic, found him guilty and sentenced him as the organizer of the attack on the TV transmitter at Duge Njive. Stankovic maintains that all he wanted was to enable the Doboj residents to watch [broadcasts from] the Banja Luka studio and Serb Radio-TV [SRT] broadcasts from Pale.
    Mr Stankovic has shown that he did not mean what he said when he redirected the transmitter towards only one source: the Banja Luka studio. That his intention differs from his statement is demonstrated by the fact that he did not contact the management of SRT to ask for the wider area of Doboj to be covered with two or three signals, SRT director-general Miroslav Toholj said.

Bosnian Serb television, Pale, September 3, 1997

VIII. Pale-controlled media carry anti-Sfor statements.

    In the wake of incidents which took place in the north-eastern Bosnian Serb towns of Brcko and Bijeljina on the morning of August 28th, the media controlled by Pale authorities began an open campaign against the international community and NATO in Bosnia- Hercegovina, calling them occupation forces.
    A radio station in Bijeljina has been broadcasting “incendiary” statements by officials of the Serbian Democratic Party [SDS] and the Serbian Radical Party [SRS] throughout the day. Speaking to a protest gathering in front of the Interior Ministry building in Pale, Premier Gojko Klickovic called to the defense of Republika Srpska from Biljana Plavsic. Police loyal to Bosnian-Serb President Plavsic took control of some police stations in the northern part of the Bosnian Serb entity, but the situation in Bijeljina and Brcko remains unclear.
    In a broadcast from Brcko, Pale television showed crowds of people in front of a Stabilization Force [Sfor] station. Improvised barricades could be seen. Sfor in Sarajevo has not confirmed reports on open confrontations between civilians and NATO soldiers which Pale media continue to reiterate.
    [Members of Sfor took control of the Bosnian Serb Radio-TV (SRT) transmitter on Udrigovo hill, north of Bijeljina, early on 28th August and cut off the power supply, interrupting broadcasting from the Bijeljina studio, the Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA reported; later on the 28th, the Udrigovo transmitter resumed broadcasting SRT programs from Pale, according to Bosnian Serb TV.]

Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA, August 28, 1997

IX. Bosnian Serbs Battle Each Other Over TV Transmitter.

By Tracy Wilkinson

    A crowd loyal to embattled Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic seized a crucial television transmitter on a remote hilltop Wednesday but was driven out by police answering to war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic.
    As Plavsic struggles to wrest power from her hard-line rivals, control of the airwaves is essential. In a country where broadcast propaganda started and sustained 3 1/2 years of war, whoever holds state media holds nearly unbreakable authority.
Plavsic’s people have occupied one of five transmitters in the Bosnian Serb half of the country, a facility they claim reaches about 50% of the Serbian population. That transmitter is located near Plavsic’s headquarters city, Banja Luka, where since Sunday journalists loyal to her have been broadcasting their own newscasts in place of the usual Karadzic-controlled transmission.
    On August 27th, they moved to take another. The tense and, at times, violent showdown over the transmission tower here, near the north-central city of Doboj, was apparently the first exchange of hostile gunfire by Bosnian Serbs in a deepening crisis that is steadily splitting Republika Srpska, the Serbian portion of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
    It also marked a foray by Plavsic’s supporters into territory where Karadzic’s forces appear to remain firmly in charge.
    Led by Milovan Stankovic [c.f. article VII.], a former army officer and the owner of a Doboj newspaper, about 30 men and women seized the transmitter and disarmed 11 police officers stationed at the installation to protect it. Stankovic said several of the officers were sympathetic to their cause, easing the takeover.
    Technicians immediately switched the frequencies so that the Banja Luka signal was beamed into thousands of homes in the Doboj area, preempting the signal from Karadzic’s stronghold of Pale.
    Armed men described by Stankovic as members of a pro-Karadzic paramilitary squad known as “The Black Arm” soon arrived and opened fire over the heads of the civilians, Stankovic said. They also beat up the chief technician. But outnumbered and seeing that some of the civilians also had guns, they retreated, Stankovic said.
    Suddenly, Bosnian Serb police with megaphones began shouting from the bottom of the hill. Reinforcements had arrived and were surrounding the group.
    Tense negotiations followed. This time, Stankovic’s people were outnumbered. They surrendered the transmitter and retreated to a nearby church.
    Several dozen police officers loyal to Karadzic, many with their pistols cocked, then emerged from the forests ringing the hill, accompanied by plainclothesmen—apparently secret police—armed with guns, hand-held radios and baseball bats.
    Two of the police officers were carrying automatic rifles, which are banned under the December 1995 peace accords that ended Bosnia’s war.
    Even some of the police were disheartened to see Serb pitted against Serb. One turned to his comrade, shaking his head: “Brother, our whole fight in the war was useless. Look at this. It’s all falling apart.”
    At the church where his group had retreated, Stankovic was circumspect. Although defeated, he said, his side had made its point. “The war started in the heads of people, and it must be broken in the heads of people,” he said. “That can only happen if electronic and print media are independent.”

Los Angeles Times, August 28, 1997

X. Plavsic Breaks Hard-liners’ TV Monopoly.

By Jovan Kovacic

    Television employees in studios in Ms Plavsic’s Banja Luka power base severed joint transmission links with studios in the Bosnian Serb hard-liner stronghold Pale and aired their own news program for the first time last night.
    A similar cut was also made in the Bosnian Serb radio station, broadcasting officials said.
    Ms Plavsic, at a rally of some 5,000 followers in Banja Luka’s main square, hailed the break with the studios under the sway of the indicted war criminal, Radovan Karadzic. “We got fed up with lies,” she said. She added that shoring up support in the army was next on her agenda.
    She said that as supreme commander of the army of Republika Srpska she, and not Momcilo Krajisnik, Mr Karadzic’s top aide, controlled the military.
    “I warn some unconscientious commanders and generals to think very carefully what it would mean if Krajisnik was the supreme commander,” she said. “Krajisnik . . . has no right to meddle in army affairs.”
    There have been conflicting reports about the army’s allegiance in the power struggle in the Serb area of Bosnia, but the powerful First Krajina Corps based in Banja Luka, and its commander, General Momir Talic, are believed to be firmly in Ms. Plavsic’s camp.
    Television employees in Banja Luka, about 100 miles north-west of Pale, mutinied late last week, saying they would no longer cooperate with Pale after the hard-liners aired a film linking Nazis and the Nato-led Stabilization Force (S-For) peacekeepers in Bosnia.

The Guardian, August 25, 1997

XI. Westendorp and late Gerd Wagner call for action over Serb Radio TV.

    The high representative in Bosnia-Hercegovina, Carlos Westendorp, on August 23rd sent a letter to Momcilo Krajisnik, member of the Bosnia-Hercegovina Presidency and chairman of the managing board of [Bosnian] Serb Radio and Television [SRT], expressing his concern with the way in which SRT has been reporting about events in the [Bosnian] Serb Republic. . . .
    Westendorp demanded that SRT broadcast a statement by Gerd Wagner [Deputy High Representative, killed in a helicopter accident earlier this month] which SRT refused to do on 18th August, by midnight August 23, and to report on his and statements by other representatives of the international community in an objective way.
    “If this is not done, I am prepared to use my powers, including those stemming from the Sintra declaration,” Westendorp says, alluding to the possibility of imposing the protectorate over SRT.
    SRT fulfilled the request and broadcast the statement by Gerd Wagner. Zoran Zuza reports:
[Zoran Zuza]     Immediately after Wagner’s statement, in which the German informs the citizens of the Serb Republic—in Serbian—about the content of the Sintra declaration and the obligation of the leaders of the sides in Bosnia to implement its conclusions before the stipulated deadline, SRT broadcast an open letter by the SRT director-general, Miroslav Toholj, to Carlos Westendorp, which says that the high representative’s actions are going beyond the bounds of the Dayton Agreement. Toholj says that he sticks to his request that Westendorp should pay for the SRT’s services he requires.

Report by B92, Belgrade, August 23, 1997

XII. Serb TV director: Banja Luka TV “under pressure.”

    The director-general of Serb Radio and Television (SRT), Miroslav Toholj, today said that the decision by the staff in the SRT studio in Banja Luka to suspend their work came as a result of pressure and threats by the security staff attached to the president of the [Bosnian] Serb Republic, Biljana Plavsic, to editors and journalists.
    “We reported and pointed out on several occasions that members of Biljana Plavsic’s office and her personal security guards were treating the people in the studio roughly,” the SRT director-general has said in a statement for SRNA [Bosnian Serb news agency].
    “At an informal meeting today, part of the staff of the SRT studio in Banja Luka which supported Mrs Plavsic’s views used unlawfully our official letterhead and the seal of our broadcasting house—in violation of the SRT’s statute, the information law and the law on strikes—and attempted to bring into question the functioning of our [information] system.
    Talking about the latest development in Banja Luka Studio of Serb TV, Toholj recalled that recently he put editor Mirko Cubrilo in charge of normalizing the situation in the studio but even he was told to leave the studio and Banja Luka.
    “But it was Mrs. Plavsic who uttered the most brutal threats against Serb TV from a presidential balcony during her last rally. Thus, she has violated the constitution, which defines her role as the head of state,” Toholj said.
    At a gathering on August 22, Banja Luka Studio employees, “with the aim of preserving the journalistic morals and the institutions of the system, demanded objective and dignified reporting and an editorial policy which would not contribute to political divisions in the Serb Republic.”
    They uttered several accusations against Serb Radio-TV editorial policy, thus explaining their decision not to broadcast programs from Banja Luka Studio “until conditions for professional work are created.”

SRNA news agency, August 22, 1997

XIII. Bosnian Serb radio-TV staff call for Sfor support.

By Tamara Pupovac

    In addition to the police in Banja Luka, the staff at the local SRT studio are also likely to withdraw their loyalty from Pale. They have been on the so-called white strike [Serbo-Croat: beli strajk] since noon today. They say that the editorial policy of the studio in Pale has been at the level of the most primitive propaganda lately, and they cannot accept it.
    They asked the information minister and the director-general of SRT to come to Banja Luka tomorrow to overcome the present situation.
    They are also prepared to ask Sfor [NATO-led Stabilization Force] tomorrow to secure the transmitter on Mt. Kozara [north of Banja Luka] whose signal covers the western part of the [Bosnian] Serb Republic and which is at the moment guarded by the police from Prijedor who are, let us recall, loyal to Interior Minister Dragan Kijac in Pale.

B92, Belgrade, August 22, 1997

XIV. Levin Proposes Use of EC-30 to Jam Bosnian Serb Broadcasts.

    Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) is proposing that the United States use an EC-130E Commando Solo special operations aircraft to broadcast television and radio messages in Bosnia to override anti-NATO propaganda being broadcast by Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic.
    “Despite his agreement to remove himself from political life, Radovan Karadzic has continued to play a leading role in Bosnian Serb politics, running the Republika Srpska from behind the scenes,” Levin, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a written statement he intended to include in the Congressional Record. “Moreover, he has used the Bosnia Serb controlled radio and television to present a distorted picture to the Bosnian Serb people. Most ominously, since the arrest of one secretly indicted war criminal and the killing of another by NATO forces in Prijedor in northwestern Bosnia on July 10, Karadzic and the state controlled media have been orchestrating attacks on NATO troops,” Levin said.
    Levin has discussed his proposal to deploy the Commando Solo with top national security officials, including President Clinton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Shalikashvili, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, and Defense Secretary William Cohen, said Levin’s spokeswoman, Kathleen McShea. While administration officials have appeared to be receptive to the EC-130 proposal, they have not committed to the concept, McShea said.
    The Commando Solo, built by Lockheed Martin LMT, is a modified C- 130E that has broadcasting and communications jamming capabilities as well as limited intelligence capabilities. It is primarily used for psychological operations missions. Each aircraft costs more than $100 million.

Phillips Business Information, Inc., August 14, 1997

CRISIS IN SERBIAN MEDIA: A WESTERN PERSPECTIVE
I. Serbs’ Shrill TV Riling the West.

By Tracy Wilkinson

    Night after night, Bosnian Serb television warns its viewers of the dangers.
    NATO aircraft enforcing peace in Bosnia are dropping poisons on Bosnian Serb communities, causing birth defects and deforestation, a broadcast advised last week. It showed footage from 1995 NATO airstrikes in Bosnia.
    And in another broadcast: “Local scum from Muslim Sarajevo” are working with “Arabs, blacks, Mongolians and other experts of the international community” to take over Bosnian Serb institutions.
    The commentaries on Srpska Radio and Television, or SRT, diplomats say, revive the harshest wartime rhetoric and are designed to inflame anti-West sentiment among Bosnian Serbs. SRT represents the most vivid example of how the continued influence of indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, who controls the station, undermines peaceful rebuilding of the shattered country, the diplomats add.
    As the chief propaganda machine for Bosnian Serb rulers, the television’s tenor has grown increasingly shrill since a power struggle involving Karadzic erupted late last month and after NATO troops on July 10 killed a war crimes suspect and arrested another—a “brutal murder and perfidious arrest,” as SRT describes it every evening.
    And the counter-criticism coming from international officials is increasingly as harsh. They obliquely warn of reprisals as “robust” as the jamming of SRT’s signal.
    On Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson, in Sarajevo, the capital, on a fact-finding visit, added his criticism: “Attempts by Bosnian Serbs to use the state-controlled media to whip up fear and hostility toward NATO are extremely irresponsible and unwise.”
    But while talk is tough, the options for punishment are limited.
    Pulling the television’s plug, jamming its signal or deploying troops of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to keep it off the air “are heavy-handed Soviet-style tactics that would be counterproductive,” warned one international official with long experience in the Balkans.
    “The Soviets used to jam Voice of America and BBC radio in Poland, and it made people there want to listen to Voice of America and BBC even more. You can roll tanks and take over the station, and then what do you do?”
    The SRT signal is heard and seen throughout eastern and northern Bosnia-Herzegovina and in a small portion of the area controlled by the Muslims and Croats. Little alternative television is available to most Bosnian Serbs.
    Propaganda was the most insidiously effective tool during nearly four years of war in Bosnia, and introducing an objective media has been a principal goal of foreign peacemakers.
    But as SRT director Miroslav Toholj said in an interview, Bosnian Serb authorities have no interest in being told how to run their airwaves.
    “We have an obligation to our people,” Toholj said in his office at the television station, where the walls are graced with pictures of Karadzic, war crimes suspect Gen. Ratko Mladic and Karadzic proxy Momcilo Krajisnik of Bosnia’s three-person presidency.
    “We are a company like CNN or ABC,” Toholj continued. “If an international organization does not like what we say, they can complain publicly. But doing anything beyond that would be catastrophic.”
    Pondering the steps to take against Bosnian Serb television has opened a debate among international officials. To what extent do Western peacekeepers want to be in a position of infringing on what under many circumstances would be considered free speech?
    Under the December 1995 peace agreement that ended Bosnia’s war and in accord with subsequent pacts, international monitors may require ethnocentric media to give more access to opposition voices and to refrain from inciting racial hatred. Peacekeepers believe that they have authority to “curtail” an offending broadcaster. But the political implications may be too risky, these officials say.
    NATO officers have warned civilian officials that a military operation to occupy SRT headquarters—a somewhat shabby three-story building in the center of Pale, the Bosnian Serb capital—could turn violent and leave the offices so heavily damaged that it could take up to six weeks to return to the air.
    A more palatable plan is to create alternative outlets, but efforts to do that during the past two years have largely failed. The most ambitious project is a $ 10.5-million television network called TV-IN, which is paid for by the U.S. and European governments and the private Soros Foundation. Its influence is minimal, its technical and journalistic quality inferior, and the Sarajevo-based network is not trusted by Serbs or Croats.
    Even in the northern city of Banja Luka, arguably the least hard-line portion of Bosnian Serb territory, a survey released Monday showed that fewer than one-half of 1% of the people watch TV-IN. Nearly half said they are regular viewers of SRT.
    SRT’s current campaign of hyperbole began after Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic accused Karadzic of corruption and tried to fire his cronies who occupy key positions in government. Television lashed out at Plavsic, accused her of conspiring with the West to sacrifice Karadzic and Republika Srpska, the Serb-controlled portion of Bosnia.
    SRT compared Plavsic to Adolf Hitler after people purporting to be her supporters burned copies of a pro-Karadzic newspaper.
    Most ominously, international officials believe the rhetoric is inciting Bosnian Serbs to violence against Western peacekeepers, who have been targeted by daily, if minor, explosions and attacks in the past 10 days. After a number of Serbian residents were ordered to deny housing and restaurant service to Westerners, television reported the phenomenon as a “spontaneous” decision by many Bosnian Serbs—“a people’s boycott.”

Los Angeles Times, July 22, 1997

OTHER NEWS AND ASSESSMENTS FROM FORMER YUGOSLAVIA
I. Vjesnik views efforts to expand independent media.

    Are the so-called independent foundations and organizations—with the mask of independent media—trying to establish a network of Yugoslav radio stations in Croatia? According to what Vjesnik has found out, the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM), financially supported by [George] Soros’ Open Society and the US AID [Agency for International Development], which are active in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia following an initiative of Belgrade’s radio station B92, should soon start broadcasting in Croatia. It is planned that in the second stage of the project the ANEM is to spread its activities all over Croatia as well as to Bosnia-Hercegovina.
    “Now, negotiations with some international organizations that support us are under way in connection with including Radio Vukovar into the network, that is, some of its programs,” Veran Matic, editor in chief of B92 and the ANEM chairman, told Vjesnik. Sanja Vukicevic, editor in chief of Radio Vukovar, confirmed these allegations, mentioning that they had also exchanged programs with B92 up to now.
    Asked whether Radio Vukovar would join the Croatian Radio network after the peaceful reintegration, Mrs. Vukicevic answered that it was their wish to remain independent. “We did not have any discussion or contacts with Croatian media. On the other hand, our wish to remain independent is supported by numerous non-governmental organizations,” Mrs. Vukicevic said. “Apart from the BBC, which intends to support the spreading of independent media in Croatia, and the US AID that already supports them, we are also supported by the US and the British embassies in that respect,” Mrs. Vukicevic specified.
    Regarding the extension of ANEM to Bosnia-Hercegovina, its chairman Mr Matic says that Radio Zid, Radio Dis and Studio 99, a radio and television station, all from Sarajevo, were interested in joining the network. Apart from them, cooperation has been established with four radio stations from the territory of the [Bosnian] Serb Republic: with radio stations from Banja Luka, Sipovo and Srebrenica.
    The ANEM project is financed by foundations and organizations that also support B92’s large-scale projects. They include Soros’ Open Society, the US AID and the European Union. All the costs for the technical equipment, which primarily includes decoders since the network broadcasts exclusively via satellites, are covered by the BBC.
    Radio B92 was founded by ANEM four years ago for the purpose of “self-protection from state repression,” Matic points out. Now, 27 radio stations from the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia are active in the network. Matic thinks that the network should be spread to other territories of the former Yugoslavia. It is not difficult to assume what independent foundations are interested in—let us remember various attempts to establish a unique radio, or computer networks like “Zamir Transnational Net” or the “Alternativna Informativna Mreza” [“Alternative Information Network” ] that were aimed at the restoration of former Yugoslavia.

Vjesnik, September 4, 1997

II. Radio B92 editor assesses status of independent media.

    The following is an interview with Veran Matic, editor of Radio B92 and chairman of the Association of Independent Media in Serbia, by Dubravka Vujanovic in the Serbian newspaper Gradjanin.
[Vujanovic]     The ban imposed on certain independent electronic media was followed by a public outcry and demands by certain opposition leaders for the frequencies to be returned. Do you have any feedback on how many radio-television stations have still not received their broadcasting permits?
[Matic]     I think all the stations are working now and that the revocation and subsequent reissuing of frequencies was just a trick this regime played to reduce the opposition’s demands.
[Q]     How many members does the Association of Independent Media presently have, and what privileges do members have?
[A]     The association has 24 members—radio and television stations. They include big broadcasters like Studio B, Radio Index, RTV Trstenik, RTV Kragujevac, RTV Pancevo, and Radio Antena M from Montenegro. All of them rebroadcast parts of the Radio B92 program, which we try to produce in cooperation with correspondents from those towns. Soon we will have several stations from Bosnia-Hercegovina, and we have an invitation for cooperation from Macedonia. So, we are actually planning a form of regional cooperation, because problems concerning the media are similar in the neighboring countries and therefore require more global resolutions.
[Q]     To what extent are foreign donors interested in giving financial aid to the independent media?
[A] [list in article I, directly above]     I have to say that help is becoming scarcer because people in the world think that the crisis in Yugoslavia ended with the end of the war.
    The association will therefore work more actively on programs that allow our radio stations to earn more from the sale of information and advertising. It is necessary to become a part of the market economy, to respect market laws.
[Q]     How will you behave in the election campaign?
[A]     Parties that are running in the elections and those that are boycotting them will receive absolutely equal treatment. We will try to limit the number of advertisements to prevent situations in which one party is advertised 10 times during a program. Everyone must be equally represented, but for very limited periods. Hour-long paid advertising is out of the question.
[Q]     The SPO [Serbian Renewal Movement] has announced that they would make maximum use of local TV stations because the state media are not open enough. Can local media even come close to having the influence that RTS has?
[A]     The local media can make quite a difference in areas where there is television. Radio does not have such an influence. As far as I know, Draskovic is mainly counting on television, but television does not cover a major part of Serbia. All of Vojvodina, eastern Serbia, Kosmet [Kosovo and Metohija], and Sandzak do not even have a serious independent television. The opposition can only expect to have political coverage in areas where they won in the last elections. I think that the people realized for the first time during the demonstrations that it is possible to gain something by using strong pressure. We need to work hard on furthering democratic processes and opening the state media.
[Q]     What kind of media policy do you expect after the elections if the SPS [Socialist Party of Serbia] wins?
[A]     They have said it clearly: The telecommunications minister announced that they would again close all the stations that had been closed and would keep closing them until they reached a number of 300 radio stations. I do not doubt that they will do it, although of course we are much better organized now and have gained experience in fighting back.
[Q]     Do you think that the many new “information mills” have created a superabundance of information without a concurrent improvement in information quality?
[A]     I think this is a common occurrence in all Eastern European countries. These countries have not had enough information for a long time; now we have hyperproduction of information, but we still feel as if we are not well enough informed. If you hear 15 different reports, you cannot decide what part is true and what part is not.
    I think that our market is too small for such a large number of daily newspapers, for instance. They will have to resort to methods similar to our association. For example, three newspapers could team up, buy one printing shop, and combine their resources. If things do not change soon, the media will lose their influence and therefore the chance to change society.
[Q]     In reality, is there a completely independent medium that does not incline towards any of the political options?
[A]     That is a very unsuitable term. We can only try to be as independent as possible, as professional as possible. That is our basic motto—to be as professional as possible.

Gradjanin, Belgrade, August 28, 1997

III. Prijedor TV “much more hard-line” than Pale.

    The media and everything that concerns them was one of the topics discussed at today’s news conference of Milorad Milakovic, independent candidate for president of Prijedor Municipality.
[Milakovic]     Speaking of the freedom of the media, I am particularly glad we emerged from political darkness last night. The biggest misfortune of our people in Krajina is a result of the fact that all senior officials of Banja Luka Radio, Srpski Glas and the television were subordinate to the Pale lobby. By emerging from the political darkness last night, I expect the freedom of the media to be in keeping with the Constitution, and the Constitution says that everybody has the right to access, that we will not use lies, spread disinformation, and that we will no longer make room for Goebbels’ media.
    I therefore appeal, as the media became free yesterday, and now we only have to consider the media in Prijedor Municipality. [sentence as heard] We can safely say that Prijedor Radio has always been the most open part of the Serb Republic media. However, the editorial policy of Kozarski Vijesnik does not fit in the present changes at all. The television studio in Prijedor is currently the biggest problem of the Serb people in Krajina. Judging by many of its beliefs and deceptions, the Prijedor studio is much more hard-line than Pale Television. We must try to find a solution for the Prijedor Television studio.

Bosnian-Serb Prijedor radio, August 25, 1997

IV. US firm competes with Media Most for Studio B.

    As Kommersant Daily has learned, Vladimir Gusinskiy [head of Russia’ s Media-Most group], who intends to purchase 49% of the shares in Belgrade’s independent television company Studio B, now has rivals. They are the American S-TA company, which already has experience investing in the Eastern electronic media.
    S-TA’s trump card is that it already has experience investing in the television [markets] of Eastern European countries. In particular, the Americans acquired a block of shares in Prague’s Nova TV station, which, as a result, was able to significantly increase the number of its viewers and advertisers in a relatively short period of time.
    The next stage of negotiations between representatives of Media-Most and Belgrade’s independent television station Studio B is to take place before the end of August. At the talks, Studio B’s management must name the sum it would like to receive for almost half of the company’s shares. For their part, representatives of Media-Most will say how much they are prepared to pay for entering Yugoslavia’s television market.
    Besides the price, Media-Most is also expecting to get some answers from its Yugoslav partners to a series of questions NTV [Russia’s Independent Television, part of Media-Most] Director Igor Malashenko posed during his first trip to Belgrade in June. At the time he held negotiations not only with Studio B’s management but also with Belgrade Mayor Zoran Djindjic (the city authorities are the founders of Studio B). Media-Most is particularly interested in the details of Studio B’s mutual relations with the Belgrade Mayor’s office and the Serbian government as well as the possibility of extending the broadcasting range.

Kommersant Daily, Moscow, August 12, 1997