Yesterday was the first official day of campaigning for the general elections to be held in Bosnia on September 14th and they could hardly have got off to a more auspicious start with the surrender of office for good, one hopes - by Dr Radovan Karadzic. It would be difficult to over emphasise the stimulus given to the elections by Dr Karadzic's resignation, however reluctantly it was tendered. The Dayton peace accord set the scene for Bosnia's first general elections after three and a half years of horrific warfare. But the person who signed it on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs was not their leader, Dr Karadzic, but the President of Serbia, Mr Slobodan Milosevic. And part of the agreement was that Dr Karadzic, an indicted war criminal, would remove himself from all political power.
Dr Karadzic, not surprisingly, was reluctant to stand down. But had he not done so, his party - the Serb Democratic Party - would have been barred from the elections. The result of that would have been deeply polarising elections in the non Serbian parts of Bosnia and probably no elections at all in the Serbian territory which would have held a referendum on Dr Karadzic's position, the result of which would be no surprise and no help. Dr Karadzic tried earlier to finesse his way around the ban by resigning as leader of the `Republic of Srpska'. But in remaining as chairman of his party he was fooling nobody about where the real power would still lie.
Whether Dr Karadzic stays off the stage - and no longer pulls the strings from the background - will depend largely on who follows him and, of course on Mr Milosevic. It was the threat of renewed UN sanctions against Serbia which forced Mr Milosevic to turn against his former protege; he never specifically promised that he would get him to step down. Dr Karadzic still stands high in his homeland and among nationalists in Serbia so there is little hope that Mr Milosevic will put him where he belongs, before the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Mr Milosevic, apart from not wanting to alienate his supporters, will be reluctant to apprehend Dr Karadzic and send him for trial. The trouble is that in the dock in The Hague, Dr Karadzic hopefully accompanied by his cut throat army chief, General Mladic - might tell the world how helpful Mr Milosevic was in assisting the Serb genocide of their fellow Bosnians. UN investigators expect to find up to 2,700 bodies when they start digging a suspected grave site outside Srebrenica next Monday.
The spokesman for the US State department said of Dr Karadzic yesterday that "he's out of power and he's out of influence and that's very positive". But only time will tell if that is really the case. He has promised not to attend any public events, to give no media interviews and to take no part in the campaigning for the elections. Even if he keeps all three promises, which is by no means certain, he could still wield power from behind the scenes. In the end it might not matter much. There are many possible and eager successors among the vice presidents and mayors; they are all of like mind with regard to the Dayton agreement and, more worryingly, about the Bosnian Muslims. They will, however, let the elections go ahead and there must be some chance that the stepping down of the most prominent of hardliners may tempt Serbs to vote for more moderate candidates, if they can find them.