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Though there seems no longer to be any love lost between Milosevic and Karadzic, the relationship between Belgrade and Pale remains complex and insidious. Dialogue and cooperation persist despite the fact that Milosevic broke relations last August with the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska, when it refused to sign on to the Contact Group peace plan for Bosnia. Members of its leadership were banned from Serbia, and the western border with Bosnia was closed. One notable exception to the ban is General Mladic, who was a general in the Yugoslav National Army (J.N.A.) before becoming commander of the Bosnian Serb military, and is frequently seen in Belgrade. Though Milosevic does not say so publicly, he is known to hope and believe that Mladic will eventually put his popularity among the Bosnian Serbs behind someone other than Karadzic-and that such a move will mean Karadzic's downfall.
Belgrade's Mladic connection is all the more significant because Western intelligence services claim there is ongoing cooperation between the J.N.A. and the Bosnian Serb military. U.S. intelligence officials in Washington say they have solid evidence that an "integrated air-defense system" based in Belgrade is feeding the Bosnian Serb antiaircraft network information on NATO overflights such as O'Grady's (see box). Milosevic insists no such system exists, but TIME has learned that the U.S. National Security Agency and the CIA have plotted the coaxial cable system that connects Bosnian Serb flak sites with Belgrade, while spy satellites have identified adjunct microwave- and radio-transmitter locations. "We have unequivocal intelligence that Milosevic has his hand in the cookie jar," says a U.S. Defense Department official. "It's as good as what we had on the Soviets during the Cuban missile crisis." One of the joint air-defense sites is just outside Pale -- a two-dome radar installation sheltered under reinforced concrete and sitting on huge, shock-absorbing springs. Built by the Yugoslav military prior to the war, the complex is said to be hardened enough to withstand anything but a nuclear attack. Bosnian Serb soldiers told TIME Correspondent Edward Barnes that the Pale radar ranges out over the Adriatic, which nato planes have to cross on their way from Aviano, their base in Italy, to Bosnia.
Cooperation on the ground is more difficult to pin down. While Milosevic claims that the Bosnian Serb army has enough hardware not to have to depend on resupply from Serbia, Western intelligence maintains that fuel, ammunition and spare parts continue to be provided by the J.N.A., and that J.N.A. funds are being used to pay many officers in the Bosnian Serb and Croatian Serb armies. The J.N.A. also supplements their officer corps. In mid-May, after Croatia's incursion into Serb-held Western Slavonia, Belgrade sent J.N.A. General Mile Mrksic to replace the officer who took responsibility for the defeat. Well known in Croatia, Mrksic commanded an artillery unit that played a key role in the destruction of Vukovar in 1991. He also took part in a Bosnian Serb attack on the eastern Bosnia enclave of Gorazde in April last year.