The New York Times

September 15, 1999

Karadzic Seen In Srebrenica, Daily Says

By Reuters

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, one of the world's most wanted war crimes suspects, recently visited the eastern town of Srebrenica and gave a speech in the main square, a newspaper said Wednesday.

The daily Dnevni Avaz said Karadzic, indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague over atrocities in Srebrenica and elsewhere in Bosnia, had freely walked around the streets of the small town close to the Yugoslav border.

``We can't confirm whether the report is correct or not,'' said spokesman Gordon Welsh for the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR), which secures peace following the 1992-1995 war.

Spokesman James Fergusson for the Office of the High Representative, the Western body overseeing the peace process, said the OHR's special envoy in Srebrenica did not believe that the report was correct, but that he would look into it.

Dnevni Avaz, which is seen as close to the ruling nationalist Muslim Party of Democratic Action, did not specify when Karadzic was in Srebrenica -- scene in 1995 of what has been called the worst massacre in Europe since World War Two.

Citing former Srebrenica residents now living in Sarajevo, it said Karadzic, 54, had been able to visit because all international officials were temporarily out of town.

Karadzic's bodyguards had set up barricades at entrances to Srebrenica, allowing him to speak freely to people there without fearing arrest, Dnevni Avaz said.

Karadzic called on the town's current residents, mostly Serb refugees from other parts of Bosnia, not to leave Srebrenica. Some of those present had told him that they wanted to return to their pre-war homes near Sarajevo, the paper said.

Karadzic, widely believed to be hiding in eastern Bosnia, was indicted twice by the U.N. war crimes tribunal, once over his alleged role in the massacre of thousands of Muslim men after Srebrenica was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995.

More than 7,000 people are still missing from Srebrenica.

Western envoys overseeing civilian aspects of Bosnia's peace process have long urged SFOR or local authorities to arrest Karadzic, saying this is needed to promote reconciliation in the Balkan country.

Some Western diplomats, however, fear that an attempt to seize him could involve a bloody fight with his bodyguards.

SFOR's Welsh stressed that the peacekeeping force did not have a mandate to hunt down indicted war criminals. He said SFOR would detain indictees if it came across them and the situation so allowed. ``We can't be in every street corner,'' he said.