The mission: Donate episodes of a popular Venezuelan soap opera to keep a fragile peace.

By DAVID ADAMS
Times Staff Writer

MIAMI - The peace process in war-torn Bosnia is in jeopardy. What’s to be done?

Send in more troops? United Nations mediators?

Or ... how about sending in Kassandra, the seductive gypsy fortuneteller and soap opera star.

Yes, at the highest levels of U.S. diplomacy, the soap opera action plan is in place. The State Department believes getting this TV show beamed into Bosnia is crucial to maintaining U.S. interests in the region. No kidding.

A Miami company that distributes Latin American TV soap operas was handed the unusual mission in Bosnia this month.

At the request of the State Department, Coral Pictures is donating 150 episodes of Kassandra, a popular Venezuelan telenovela, to keep the peace in the town of Banja Luka.

The town is divided between supporters of Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic, a political moderate supported by Washington, and hard-line loyalists of Radovan Karadzic, indicted for war crimes.

Until recently the local television station was controlled by Karadzic’s people. He may be a war criminal, but it seems that the former psychiatrist knows what his countrymen like to watch on TV. Latin soaps have been popular for years with working-class audiences pulling themselves up from poverty. The Bosnian conflict appears to have generated a similar need for fantasy. Kassandra follows a standard plot line, involving a poor young gypsy woman who lands the rich and handsome man of her dreams.

The former Yugoslavia got its first look at Kassandra when TV Belgrade II in Serbia bought the rights to the soap from Coral Pictures and began broadcasting it in June. Dubbed in Serbo-Croatian, the soap was an instant hit.

Coral even sent Kassandra herself - actress Coraima Torres - to Belgrade to promote the series last month.

‘The attention she got was incredible," says Antonio Paez, Coral vice president. "People were fainting all over the place and changing their babies’ names to Kassandra." So were the Bosnian broadcasters in Karadzic’s stronghold of pale. So much so that they began pirating the signal from TV Belgrade II, illegally retransmitting the episodes on their own hard-line network.

They were in the middle of showing one episode when the station was

Coraima Torres and Osvaldo Ríos star in the soap opera Kassandra

seized by rival supporters of Plavsic, the moderate.

TV screens in Banja Luka went blank.

Although Plavsic supporters had the station back on the air within hours, Kassandra was gone. It seems that Plavsic’s people - the side backed by Washington would not steal a television signal, and they didn’t have the money to put Kassandra back on the air.

Viewers, by now addicted to the soap, were not amused.

U.S. State Department officials warned that the loss of Kassandra could hurt Plavsic’s popularity and even undermine her government.

Calls were made to the Venezuelan embassy in Washington and to Paez at the Miami office of Coral Pictures.

"The U.S. government asked for our help in trying to get Kassandra: back on the air as quickly as possible because it had become the No. 1 show in Bosnia," says Paez.

At first Paez was confused. Since its 1993 release, the series has enjoyed success all over Latin America, as well as China, Japan and Indonesia. In Spain it won a 44 percent market share, and it has twice been repeated in the United States. But Paez couldn’t recall ever having sold the program to a Bosnian station.

The State Department explained the situation - the piracy, Bosnia’s factions, the war crimes, and of course Plavsic’s penniless state. Given the State Department’s concern, Paez said Coral would help out.

The company agreed to donate all 150 episodes, which normally sell for between $75,000 and $112,500. "Hopefully, we’ll get paid sometime in the future," says Paez. "But we’re not counting on it." The company would be willing to accept a trade, says Paez - a distinguished service medal or the keys to the city, perhaps.

On one condition, adds Paez. "They’d have to eliminate most of the land mines first."

And so goes the peace process in Bosnia.