Karadzic's arrest expected today

UNITED NATIONS -- The chief UN war crimes prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia said she expects a most wanted figure from the Balkan wars, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, to be arrested today.

Carla del Ponte refused yesterday to disclose the basis for her optimism that Karadzic, who has been in hiding for nearly a decade, will be taken into custody.

''I'm still thinking that somebody is looking for Karadzic very hard and that he will be arrested very soon," she said. ''Of course I have [information], but you all understand that I cannot tell it now publicly. Let's obtain the arrest of Karadzic, and after we will speak about what we have done."

She was responding to a question about a report that she felt Karadzic would be handed over to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, this month. When a reporter noted that June ends today, she replied: ''I'm still expecting [it], yes. But let's see."

The chief prosecutor spoke to reporters after telling the UN Security Council it was unacceptable that Karadzic and his military chief, General Ratko Mladic, were still fugitives nearly 10 years after the Dayton peace agreement was signed ending the war in Bosnia.

Karadzic was the leader of Bosnia's Serbs during the ethnic war that claimed 200,000 lives and left 1.8 million people homeless.

Serbs opposed to Bosnia's independence from Yugoslavia fought against Muslims and Croats who supported it. The Dayton accord divided Bosnia into two ministates -- the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb republic.

Karadzic is accused of having masterminded Bosnia's 1992-95 war with Slobodan Milosevic, who was then the leader of Yugoslavia and who is accused of working to create a ''greater Serbia." Milosevic is currently being tried at The Hague for genocide.

Karadzic and Mladic were indicted in 1995 by the UN tribunal on charges of genocide for their alleged roles in atrocities that included the Bosnian Serb massacre of up to 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica, the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II.

''How long will it be tolerated that these leaders escape justice?" del Ponte asked.

She placed the blame squarely on Serbia and Montenegro and the Serb-controlled half of Bosnia known as Republika Srpska.

On Friday NATO-led peacekeepers raided Karadzic's former wartime headquarters at the Panorama Hotel in Pale, his stronghold in Republika Srpska. They also raided the Pale premises of Karadzic's Serb Democratic Party.

But NATO peacekeepers did not say whether anything was found.

The NATO search occurred three days after the Bosnian Serb president, Dragan Cavic, made the first formal acknowledgment by a top Bosnian Serb official that the massacre at Srebrenica took place and was the work of Serb forces.

Cavic also hinted last week that war crimes suspects, such as Karadzic, could be tracked down.

''Those who have committed these crimes have lost face and cannot expect the whole Serb nation to lose its face because of them," Cavic said.

Del Ponte told the Security Council that since December, authorities in Serbia-Montenegro had provided ''almost no cooperation" with the prosecutor's office and that the country has become a ''haven" for fugitives.

At least 15 fugitives, including Mladic, ''spend most of their time there," she said.

''According to information recently obtained, fugitives that were believed to reside in Republika Srpska have moved across the border," del Ponte said.