Plavsic was meeting President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade for the first time since Karadzic surrendered presidential authority to her over the weekend.
International mediators are pressing Milosevic to extradite Karadzic to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague and are concerned that he remains at the head of the ruling Serb Democratic Party, or SDS, in the Bosnian Serb republic.
Karadzic's decision not to stand in interethnic Bosnian elections and to give Plavsic, one of his vice presidents, executive power has not convinced mediators that he has been really sidelined.
"The issue is this," said Michael Steiner, deputy to the international High Representative in Bosnia. "Is Karadzic still in power and is he perceived to be still in power. The answer to both these questions is obviously 'yes.'"
Mediators hope that Milosevic, who threatened the Bosnian Serbs with reprisals if they did not get rid of Karadzic, would convince Plavsic to complete his ouster.
The international community's High Representative for Bosnia, Carl Bildt, met Milosevic on Wednesday to press for more cooperation.
In his ultimatum to the Bosnian Serbs a week ago, Milosevic demanded full compliance with the Bosnian Peace agreement under which Karadzic and his army commander General Ratko Mladic should lose power and be extradited.
Plavsic has already said she would not turn either man over to The Hague and Mladic's name has barely been mentioned during the protracted battle over Karadzic. Mediators do not doubt that Belgrade, on which the Bosnian Serb republic depends for economic survival, could physically deliver Karadzic.
Milosevic has pleaded that arresting the Bosnian Serb war leaders would land him in political difficulties and urged that the elections would effectively neutralize him.
The problem with his argument for the West is that it would leave Karadzic and the SDS free to undermine the poll, intended to provide Bosnia with interethnic democratic institutions.
It is already clear that the hardline parties on all three sides who led Bosnia into war in 1992 are likely to emerge as the election victors and entrench partition rather than support reintegration.
The leading election candidates announced by the SDS on Wednesday are all notorious hardliners working toward the destruction of a multiethnic solution for Bosnia.
The party said Plavsic would be its candidate for Bosnian Serb president and that the powerful Momcilo Krajisnik would run for Bosnia's collective presidency.
Foreign Minister Aleksa Buha was nominated to stand for Krajisnik current post as president of the Bosnian Serb parliament.
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