BOSNIA: NATO Does Not Nab Karadzic in Bosnia Village

(28/2/2002)BRUSSELS (February 28) - NATO said on Thursday it had failed to find former Bosnian Serb leader and accused war criminal Radovan Karadzic during a raid on a Bosnian village, but the operation showed its determination to track him down. A statement issued by the NATO-led SFOR peacekeeping force in the former Yugoslav republic said three weapons caches were found and seized during the operation around the village of Celebici in southern Bosnia. "Karadzic was not found at this location," said the statement, read to Reuters by a NATO spokesman. "However, this operation demonstrates SFOR's capabilities and resolve to act in apprehending, by force if necessary, persons indicted for war crimes." Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic have been indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the 1995 mass killing of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys and for the three-and-a-half year siege of Sarajevo, which killed around 12,000 people. SFOR has been criticized in the past for doing too little to capture suspected war criminals, especially Karadzic and Mladic, the tribunal's two most-wanted men. The operation by multinational forces was conducted after they received intelligence that Karadzic was hiding in a compound near Celebici. SFOR said the weapons, found in several buildings of the compound, included significant quantities of anti-tank rockets, rifle grenades, mortar rounds, automatic machine guns, antipersonnel mines and large-caliber ammunition.

//Shqiptarja.com

TAG:
• Ratko Mladiç