Mystery over a French officer's role in Bosnia

By MASSIMO CALABRESI

veryone makes mistakes. Take French Army Maj. Herve Gourmelon. Back in 1994, while a press officer for UNPROFOR, the U.N. military mission in Bosnia, Gourmelon was caught on hidden video rifling through the desk of UNPROFOR's military commander, Gen. Michael Rose, according to sources in Sarajevo. "He was the most obvious spook in town," says one Bosnia-based Western diplomat. Thereafter marked as an active French agent among the international community, Gourmelon--known for being an amiable, pipe-smoking guy who once accidentally discharged his pistol in the office and bought champagne to apologize--was nonetheless tolerated by U.S. and European delegations. "It was known that he passed information to the Serbs [and] sometimes that was useful," the diplomat says, adding: "What has been alleged now does not fall into the 'useful' category."

According to reports in the Washington Post last week, Gourmelon met with Bosnia's most wanted alleged war criminal, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, throughout 1997--and possibly leaked information to him about NATO plans for his arrest. U.S. officials in Washington have leveled the charges, saying the NATO commander in Bosnia, U.S. Gen. Wesley Clarke, scrapped plans to arrest Karadzic late last summer after learning of the meetings. Karadzic is accused of genocide and crimes against humanity for the slaughter of civilians in Sarajevo and Srebenica during the war.

In a terse statement Thursday, the French Defense Ministry denied "categorically" that NATO plans had been jeopardized, and said only that "a French officer maintained various contacts consonant with his orders. As soon as the course of these contacts could have appeared questionable, this officer was immediately given a new assignment in France." A high-ranking French diplomat adds: "If his contact with the Bosnian Serbs had an impact on the decision not to go ahead with the plan, then it was one of many elements. This is not a big deal." NATO spokesmen say military relations with the French remain solid despite the affair and Paris officials say the whole thing is an anti-French ruse to undermine its reputation abroad at a time when members of the previous government are answering accusations they abetted genocide in Rwanda.

But the French have yet to confirm or deny publicly the primary allegation of the Gourmelon affair--that one of their officers breached Western policy and held meetings with Bosnia's most wanted man. Their failure to do so, say outraged international officials charged with implementing the peace, threatens Bosnia's fragile stability.