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Bosnia leader quits over Iraq arms
The chairman of Bosnia's three-member presidency resigned Wednesday after being implicated in a local company's violation of the U.N. arms embargo against Iraq, the speaker of the Bosnian Serb parliament said. Mirko Sarovic, a Bosnian Serb who currently leads the country's multi-ethnic presidency, oversaw the illegal export of refurbished engines for Iraq's military aircraft, according to a team of international investigators. Hope they got their money up front on those. I'm not even sure why Iraq had aircraft, all the use they got out of them... The team's report was presented last week to Bosnia's top international official, Paddy Ashdown. Ashdown had ordered the investigation after finding that an attempt by Bosnian Serb authorities to shed light on the deal had failed to address the question of which political leaders approved it or knew about it. The prime minister of the Bosnian Serb mini-state, Dragan Mikerevic, told reporters Wednesday that it was in the public interest for Sarovic to resign "because of the violation of the U.N. Security Council resolution concerning Iraq." The investigation found that Sarovic knew about and failed to stop Bosnian aviation company Orao's illegal exports of engine parts for fighter planes to Iraq. NATO peacekeepers found evidence of the illegal trade during a raid in October of Orao, which is based in the Bosnian Serb town of Bijeljina. Posted by: Fred Pruitt 2003-04-02 |
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