NATO RAID LINKS BOSNIAN GOVERNMENT, TERRORIST TRAINING CAMP.

Byline: Kit R. Roane The New York Times

Angry NATO officers said Friday that a building near Sarajevo that they raided Thursday, arresting 10 men including three Iranians, had been a terrorist training center, run with the connivance of the Bosnian government.

The three-story chalet, 20 miles west of Sarajevo, had been rented by the Bosnian government and used by Interior Ministry forces, at least until recently.

Inside, the NATO raiders found 60 weapons, explosives, instructions for laying mines and an array of booby-trapped objects including toys and household items. It had a special makeup room for disguises and another with mock-ups of installations and buildings, some showing little figures going in and out of doors.

Notebooks laid out the daily timetables of possible targets, while others showed students' grades for planning well done.

There was no immediate evidence linking the house to any particular terrorist attacks, on Bosnian Serb or other targets. But the nature of the materials discovered and the presence of foreign trainers - possibly illegal under the Dayton peace agreement, which prohibits foreign troops apart from NATO - caused what may be the biggest rift so far between the Muslim-dominated government of Bosnia and the NATO forces sent here to enforce the peace.

"It doesn't take a genius to figure out what we found here is an abomination," said Adm. Leighton Smith, the U.S. commander of NATO forces in Bosnia, as he toured the area. "No one can escape the obvious, that there is terrorist training activity going on in this building and it has direct association with people in the government."

But the Bosnian government has vigorously denied that the camp was used by Islamic fighters, saying NATO has misunderstood what is an anti-terrorist operation being conducted by the Bosnian army with the help of foreign experts.

Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic told reporters Friday that three of the men detained had diplomatic status, meaning they were possibly employed by the Iranian Embassy in Sarajevo. And a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mirza Hajric, added that the center had existed since before the Bosnian war.

"What hurts me a lot is that these guys say this is terrorism, but look at the Bosnian government's record," he complained. "We have never been accused of any form of terrorism. We have been known throughout the world as a victim of it, not one who organizes it."

"This is very damaging," he added. "There was a clear political intention to make a political stir."

The raid comes just before an emergency meeting this weekend in Rome, called by the United States and its NATO allies, with the presidents of Bosnian, Croatia and Serbia. The meeting is intended to improve compliance with the Dayton accords amid signs that the elaborate military and political settlement was fraying.

In the most recent threat to the accords, senior Serbian officers stopped communicating with NATO last week after several of their soldiers were detained by the Bosnian government. Then two were flown to the custody of the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague on suspicion of war crimes.

Despite the new friction with the Sarajevo government, Thursday's raid helps solve at least one problem for NATO: It may help reduce the perception on the part of the Serbs that NATO has not been even-handed in enforcing the agreement.

The 10 people detained at the building here by NATO forces included seven Bosnian soldiers and three men with Iranian passports. All were later turned over to the Bosnian government for investigation.

If the center was training terrorists, NATO officials were providing scanty details about what they were learning about possible targets.

While earlier intelligence reports had warned that Iranian-influenced fighters might make terrorist attacks on NATO forces in Bosnia, there was no indication Friday that NATO or U.S. installations were singled out as targets in the materials found in the house.

NATO has called the government's explanation disingenuous, saying that the Bosnian Ministry of Interior has every right to keep an intelligence force in its country but that it should draw the line at hiring Iranians to instruct them in building terrorist-type bombs, given the perceived threat from Islamic extremists in the country and the fact that doing so violates the peace accord.

"What is bothersome is the presence of Iranians on the ground," said a U.S. intelligence officer at the site. "There is no complaint that an intelligence school was run, but methods of terrorism and kidnapping which obviously violate international accords are our great concerns. And it appears that all the students were Bosnians and the instructors were Iranians, judging by the material on hand."