Nato pledges to apprehend Karadzic and Mladic

The net is closing on the two most wanted men in former Yugoslavia, as Nato today pledged that former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic and his military chief RatkoMladic, would be brought to justice 'come what may'.

At the same time, the chief prosecutor of the Hague war crimes tribunal, Carla del Ponte, turned up the pressure on the prime minister of the Bosnian Serb state - where Mr Karadzic is believed to be hiding out - to speed up moves to hand him over to justice.

Since Yugoslavia surrendered Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, to The Hague last Thursday, pressure has mounted on the Bosnian Serbs and on Nato's S-For peacekeepers in Bosnia to detain Mr Karadzic.

Mladen Ivanic, the Bosnian Serb premier, yesterday insisted in The Hague that he had no idea where Mr Karadzic was. But on Tuesday his government moved the passage of key laws on co-operating with the tribunal, which will take effect within weeks.

Speaking in Kiev, Nato's Secretary General, George Robertson, said there was 'no statute of limitations' for those indicted by the UN's war crimes tribunal and added: "Karadzic is unfinished business for Nato and S-For'.

Mr Karadzic has been indicted on charges of genocide over some the most bloody massacres of the 1992-5 Bosnian conflict, including the shelling of Sarajevo and the mass murder of 6,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia, in July 1995.

Ms Del Ponte recently said it was 'scandalous' that Mr Karadzic and his military chief, General Ratko Mladic, remained at large, six years after being indicted. The comment was widely seen as an attack on S-For as well as the authorities of the Bosnian Serb entity, the Republika Srpska.

Yesterday Lord Robertson said that the 'principal obligation' for detaining Mr Karadzic is on the authorities in Republika Srpska. But he added: 'We have made it clear that if we had information enabling us to arrest Radovan Karadzic we would act on it swiftly and robustly.

'There have been no confirmed sightings of Karadzic for at least two years,' Lord Robertson said, while Mr Mladic is thought to be in Serbia and outside Nato's grasp. Both men, he added "will be in The Hague come what may'.

Mr Karadzic's wife yesterday denied that her husband planned to surrender to the tribunal and give evidence against his former patron Mr Milosevic.

"The attitude of Radovan Karadzic towards that tribunal has not changed, nor will it change under any conditions," Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic said in a statement released in Pale.

The fact that Mr Karadzic remains at liberty is a growing embarrassment for Nato, given its big military presence in Bosnia. There have been repeated suggestions that S-For troops have failed to swoop on him for fear of sustaining casualties in the process. The former Bosnian Serb leader is known to have a well-armed body guard and has sworn he will not be taken alive to The Hague.

But Lord Robertson ridiculed suggestions that Nato soldiers had failed to act on clear information of Mr Karadzic's whereabouts.

"Rumours of Karadzic walking the streets are as reliable as those of Elvis in the streets of Nashville", said the Secretary General, adding that "a lot of effort is put into tracking these men".

- INDEPENDENT