VASIC ARRESTED BY REGULAR SARAJEVO POLICE - IVANKO

( Editorial: --> 1724 ) SARAJEVO, Feb 13 (Hina) - According to first reports, Bosnian Serb Goran Vasic was apprehended by members of the Sarajevo police, not by members of unauthorised secret services, as speculated, UN spokesman in Sarajevo, Aleksandar Ivanko, said on Friday. Goran Vasic was arrested on 6 February for suspicion that he had in 1993 killed the then incumbent Bosnia-Herzegovina vice-premier, Hakija Turajlic. Ivanko said that the International Police Task force (IPTF) had checked the records of the Sarajevo Canton Interior Ministry about police officers who had participated in the arrest. However, the IPTF was not satisfied with the report on the manner and circumstances of the arrest of Vasic, and had requested additional information, Ivanko said. According to the Sarajevo media, the Sarajevo police had carefully planned the apprehension. Undercover Sarajevo police officers spent three months negotiating with Vasic about the possibility of purchase of his pre-war house which had remained on the territory of the Bosnian Federation. Vasic arrived on Federal territory only when he was to sign a phoney contract and take the money, which was when he was apprehended in a flash action by the skilful police officers. Describing Vasic's arrest as a precedent, Ivanko said the case warned about the necessity of an urgent establishment of a body which would work on cases when a citizen of one Bosnian entity commits a crime in the other. Bosnian Federation prosecutor, Suljo Babic, said the Bosnian Federation would defer Vasic to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) if requested to do so. According to some witnesses, Vasic participated in the taking of some civilians from the neighbourhood near the Sarajevo airport in 1992 who had never been seen again. The extradition of Vasic to Republika Srpska, however, was out of the question, because that would be the same as setting him free, Babic told a Sarajevo newspaper. "Had they wanted to put Vasic on trial in Republika Srpska for the murder of Hakija Turajlic, they have had the opportunity to do so for over four years, but it obviously never occurred to them," Babic said. (hina) lm jn 131509 MET feb 98