Radovan Karadzic

The wearisome difficulties of negotiating a peace settlement intensified Thursday as the Bosnian Muslims launched an offensive in Sarajevo and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic abruptly decided to leave New York. Reports of the offensive, coming only one day after the Clinton Administration announced its peace plan, prompted U.N.

A Bosnian Serb general was convicted of genocide and other war crimes Wednesday by a United Nations tribunal in the Netherlands for his role in plotting and carrying out the murder of thousands of Muslim men in Eastern Bosnia in 1995. Zdravko Tolimir, intelligence chief and deputy to wartime Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic, was found guilty of murder, persecution, deportation and genocide by a 2-1 judgment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Tolimir, 64, was a key architect of the criminal conspiracies to eradicate Muslims from Bosnian territory coveted by Serbs, including the killing of at least 6,000 Muslim men from the purportedly U.N.-protected enclave of Srebrenica in 1995.

The pilgrimages began early this year. Ambassadors who had never set foot in Serb-controlled Bosnia came calling, as did Western bankers and once-banished aid workers. Their not-secret, yet subversive, mission was to encourage an embryonic opposition to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, an indicted war crimes suspect. They hoped to build an alternative capital here to Pale, his wartime stronghold, populated with hard-liners. Initially, it looked good.

Witnesses die. Memories fade. Victims move on with their lives, leaving no forwarding addresses. The passage of nearly two decades since the most heinous crimes attributed to Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic could impede his prosecution at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, legal analysts say. But those familiar with Mladic's alleged role in the worst atrocities to afflict Europe since the Nazis insist his conviction is assured despite...

The commander of the world's most powerful military alliance travels to the village stronghold of war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic and suggests that he surrender "soon." Simultaneously, NATO moves to hobble the special police guarding Karadzic. And Karadzic's leading political opponent, with backing from Washington, fights on in her battle to sideline him and take control of the Bosnian Serb leadership.

This small town with its pocket-sized Orthodox Church and tatty cafes is Karadzic country: a place where indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic has long been viewed as a savior, a saint. But even here, where the Bosnian Serb leader lived at the height of his power during this country's brutal war, there is a weariness when people talk about Karadzic--as if they love him but are almost too tired to defend him.

The wife of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on Saturday added to the speculation surrounding her husband's possible surrender to a war crimes court, saying Karadzic will "never" give himself up. Ljiljana Karadzic's defense of her husband was echoed by his closest political ally, Momcilo Krajisnik, the Bosnian Serb member of Bosnia-Herzegovina's three-person presidency.

NATO-led peacekeepers staged a dramatic helicopter raid on two remote mountain villages Thursday but failed to capture Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is wanted on war crimes charges by a U.N. tribunal. The raid began when four helicopters landed near the southern Bosnian village of Celebici. Black-masked soldiers stormed out to search houses and other buildings, breaking through locks or doors when necessary, local residents told reporters who later visited the scene.

In his first comments since a U.S.-brokered peace deal established a Bosnian Serb republic but ended his political future, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic agreed Friday to accept the accord and stop the fighting. But he vowed to continue to demand some Serb control over Sarajevo, the disputed and coveted capital of Bosnia. "We accept the peace," a subdued Karadzic said in a live broadcast Friday night on Bosnian Serb television, even as Serb protesters marched against the peace plan.

Former President Jimmy Carter said Wednesday that he will visit Bosnia-Herzegovina at the invitation of Bosnian Serb warlord Radovan Karadzic to try to mediate an end to the bloody Balkan war--provided Karadzic follows through with a six-point plan to ease tensions.

Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic appeared in court for the first time since his trial for genocide started but said he would not take part again unless he had more time to prepare. Karadzic, acting as his own lawyer, boycotted the start of proceedings last week before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, where he faces 11 war crimes charges including genocide during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. Karadzic, who has denied all charges, was the leader of the Serb republic that sought to carve its own state from Bosnia during the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic made a defiant stand before a U.N. court preparing to try him on genocide charges, refusing to enter pleas Friday and branding the tribunal a NATO proxy out to "liquidate" him. Judge Iain Bonomy entered not guilty pleas on Karadzic's behalf on 11 counts, which also include charges of crimes against humanity, allowing pretrial proceedings to proceed even though he rejects the court's legitimacy. Karadzic is charged with genocide for allegedly masterminding atrocities, including the slaughter of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men in Srebrenica in July 1995 and the deadly siege of Sarajevo, when he was president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb republic.

Re "Arrival of Karadzic puts tribunal back in spotlight," July 31 The Times' report on Radovan Karadzic carries the usual preconceived prejudices against Serb leaders. I met Karadzic briefly in the town of Jajce in Bosnia across the Serbian border in 1993. I also spent a couple of hours with his vice president, Nikola Koljevic. I was a friend and colleague of Karadzic's foreign policy advisor, John Zametica. Koljevic and Zametica were not genocidal Hitlers. Nor was Slobodan Milosevic.

Thirteen years after he was indicted on charges of waging a campaign of ethnic genocide, Radovan Karadzic made his first appearance Thursday before the war crimes tribunal at The Hague, complaining that he had been "kidnapped" and vowing to serve as his own attorney. The former Bosnian Serb leader quickly signaled the tactics he could use in court by attempting to shift the discourse from his own alleged crimes to what he claimed were assassination plots and other dark conspiracies.

The extradition of Radovan Karadzic to the war crimes tribunal at The Hague is being hailed as a triumph for the pursuit of international justice and a potential deterrent to brutish leaders tempted to flout the law. But the fact that it took 13 years to apprehend Karadzic tempers the celebration and raises new challenges for the much-criticized court. The passage of time also has resulted in lesser, and perhaps more realistic, expectations of the benefits the trial can produce.

Radovan Karadzic, a onetime psychiatrist who led his Bosnian Serb people through a brutal ethnic war, was extradited early today to the international tribunal in The Hague, where he will stand trial on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. A fugitive for more than a decade, Karadzic has been in a Serbian jail since his arrest, which was announced July 21.

NATO-led peacekeepers searched remote Bosnian villages Friday in a second day of unsuccessful raids aimed at arresting Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who faces war crimes charges before a U.N. tribunal. "First the helicopters came, and then they came on foot," said Mitar Bozovic, 57, a farmer in the southeastern Bosnian village of Borje. "There were a lot of them. At least 20 were around my house."

He grew a bushy white beard and called himself Doctor David. He peddled meditation and alternative healing, sold amulets on a website and made the rounds on the lecture circuit. Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader regarded as one of the world's most notorious fugitive war-crimes suspects, built a life on the lam that was public, if disguised, and seemingly unfettered by fears of detection.

The real Dragan Dabic is a 66-year-old construction worker who was shocked to discover that his identity apparently had been stolen by one of the world's most notorious war crimes suspects. Radovan Karadzic assumed Dabic's identity as a cover, officials said. The real Dabic lives in Ruma, a Serbian town just north of Belgrade, said Rasim Ljajic, a government official in charge of war crimes cases. "Dabic's ID differs from Karadzic's only in the photographs of the two," Ljajic said.