(FEBRUARY 29)—Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is being sought by an international tribunal that has indicted him for war crimes, was sighted four times on Tuesday by NATO peacekeepers in the Serb stronghold of Banja Luka, but they decided it was too risky to try to detain him, NATO spokesmen said today.
NATO's top commander here emphasized in a television news broadcast tonight that the peacekeeping force's job has not changed despite Karadzic's public appearances and increased political pressures over what role NATO should play in taking alleged war criminals into custody. "Our job is not to go hunt them," U.S. Admiral Leighton W. Smith Jr. said about Karadzic and 50 others indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.
NATO officials have said repeatedly that the multinational troops "would take action if they come across the individuals in the normal course of duties" but that security concerns and circumstance would dictate how they would react. NATO, which deployed here in December, began distributing photos and information about the indicted men this month.
Indictment of Radovan Karadzic
Karadzic, who apparently has been working to shore up political support in northern Bosnia over the past few weeks, was spotted over a three-hour period Tuesday as international mediators and officials of Bosnia's Muslim-led government met in Banja Luka's city hall to discuss implementation of the peace plan. He was "hustled off" by his substantial contingent of bodyguards when NATO soldiers were seen, NATO spokesman Col. John Kirkwood said today.
Kirkwood said Karadzic, who was seen between 12:20 and 3:10 p.m., "at no time" came in "direct contact" with troops, and the soldiers who saw him "did not have the strength in numbers to effect a detention." NATO spokesmen added tonight that "at each sighting, there were always civilians between Karadzic" and the troops.
In an interview on Bosnian state-controlled television, Smith said he "admired" what he called a "responsible reaction" by the soldiers. Had they attempted to detain Karadzic, Smith said, "there clearly would have been some resistance. That would have resulted in perhaps an exchange of gunfire, which would not have been very smart in the middle of a crowded place... We are not going to endanger civilians and others directly in the area."
Bosnian Prime Minister Hasan Muratovic, who attended the Banja Luka meeting with international mediator Carl Bildt, did not directly comment on the NATO-led force's response. Muratovic said, however, that participants in the meeting were concerned about the Bosnian Serb leader's presence—and his substantial security detail. "He could take us hostage," Muratovic said on Bosnian television.
Earlier Coverage of Karadzic...
After Standoff with Machine Guns at Pale Stronghold
Bosnia's Most Wanted Rants Over War Crime Charges
(PALE, FEB 21—From the Electronic Telegraph) Italian NATO soldiers came yesterday within yards confronting, and possibly arresting, the Bosnian Serb "president", Radovan Karadzic, who heads the wanted list at the War Crimes Tribunal. The Italian patrol, on a routine mission to Pale, the Bosnian Serb capital, were barred by Serb bodyguards from the car park outside the building in which Bosnian Serb politicians work.They had no idea that Karadzic was on the premises, according to an IFOR spokesman, Maj Peter Bullock. He said: "The Italians were . . . escorting Serbs back from a meeting in Sarajevo. They delivered the three men, then left."
The bodyguards reacted as if the vehicles carrying the armed Italians had come to pull in Karadzic. The scene was witnessed from a distance by Dusan Stojanovic, the Associated Press reporter in Pale. "They were turned back by dozens of Karadzic's personal security guards, who cocked their machine-guns," he reported. "The NATO troops turned round and left."
Moments later Karadzic came out of the building and began ranting about the charges which have been laid against him in the Hague. NATO troops have been issued with a poster showing photographs of 16 Serb and Croat leaders wanted by the Hague court—the faces of Karadzic and his military leader, Gen Ratko Mladic, prominent among them.
"Some people are behaving as if we are already convicted," Karadzic said yesterday. "This is disastrous for the tradition of the law in the West and I can't understand why they are only accusing, and not trying to understand. "The international community is doing what is easiest, just accusing the Serbs."
"Am I ever going to see this picture,
or is it going straight to the Hague?"
When a photographer snapped Karadzic as he left surrounded by bodyguards, the Bosnian Serb leader barked: "Am I ever going to see this picture, or is it going straight to the Hague?" Had Karadzic left his office a few minutes sooner, the Italians would have been in a quandary. Under the Dayton peace accords, IFOR troops are bound to arrest suspected war criminals on the wanted list.This was clarified in Rome at the weekend at the special summit on the Bosnian peace agreement. The Italian Foreign Minister, Susanna Agnelli, said the 52 now indicted would have to be apprehended "but there might be amnesty for those not accused by name." In Rome there was speculation that it had been agreed among the international powers trying to enforce the Dayton accords that a major effort is to be made to arrest Karadzic. It has been recognised that arresting Gen Ratko Mladic would be trickier as it might start serious fighting between the Bosnian Serb forces and IFOR.
Mladic still rides high in the affections of the Bosnian Serbs, and his personal following extends beyond the Bosnian Serb Army to much of the Serb-based Army in the rump Yugoslav Federation, now consisting of Serbia and Montenegro. The President of the Hague War Crimes Tribunal, Antonio Cassese, said yesterday that he expected Bosnian Muslims to be indicted by the court next month. So far all those accused are Serbs and Croats.
Judge Cassese was in Paris to rally support and raise more funds for the war crimes investigation. The French government wants all suspects named by the court to be brought to trial in the Hague as soon as possible. But yesterday Hervey de Charette, the French Foreign Minister, was uncharacteristically downbeat about the way the Dayton accords were being enforced in Bosnia. The brave words in Rome, he suggested, were not being matched by developments on the ground.
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