KARADZIC ESCAPES ARREST; FRENCH ACCUSED OF TIP-OFF. Thousands of NATO-led troops conducted a massive operation near Foca earlier this month in an attempt to arrest Radovan Karadzic, but he eluded capture.

During the operation, roadblocks were set up around the towns of Celebici and Foca, phone lines were cut, and local residents were instructed not to leave their homes, Bosnian media reported.

Karadzic may have been warned of the operation in advance by a French army captain, according to press reports in Europe. The French soldier allegedly informed a Bosnian Serb counterpart that a raid was in the works, newspapers in Germany and the U.K. charge.

"Both [newspapers] carried transcript details of the reported conversation, which the Times said had been monitored by British intelligence. Mr. Karadzic, the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs, is reported to have fled the area in the nick of time."

France's ambassador to NATO, Benoit D'Aboville, denied the charges, BBC reports, and NATO officials denied them as well.

However, skeptics note this isn't the first time French officials have been accused of helping Serb nationalists or protecting Serb war criminals.

"Last December, a French major, Pierre-Henri Bunel, was found guilty of treason for tipping off the Serbs about NATO military plans before the Kosovo conflict," the Independent noted. "[He] said he was acting under the orders of French intelligence. In 1998, a French S-FOR spokesman was removed from his duties after he leaked details of operations to arrest Mr. Karadzic."

Karadzic has been indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity, for spearheading efforts to wipe out the non-Serb population across large regions of Bosnia.

He remains popular among many Bosnian Serbs who either supported the drive to eliminate Muslims or deny that any crimes took place. "Bosnian Serb television now refers to the indicted war criminal as 'our first president,' and a newly launched Web site to promote 'the truth about Radovan Karadzic' proclaims his innocence," AP reports. "A song often heard on Bosnian Serb radio urges Karadzic to ‘come down from the mountains in your Mercedes’ and save his people."

MILOSEVIC TRIAL UNDERWAY. The war-crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic is underway in The Hague, focusing first on ethnic cleansing crimes committed in Kosovo.

The U.N. war crimes tribunal will merge accusations regarding crimes in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia into a single trial. Charges are most severe in connection with crimes in Bosnia, the only case where Milosevic stands accused of genocide.

Many in Serbia still support their former leader and believe that Serbs were the lone victims in Balkan wars that raged in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo.

"The Serbs are not only unable to acknowledge war crimes but they are also convinced they never occurred," Srdjan Bogosavljevic, director of the Strategic Marketing agency, told journalist Bojan Toncic in Belgrade. "When we asked them to cite three war crimes committed by Serbs, half of the interviewees said Serbs did not commit a single crime."

Bogosavljevic's agency polled 2,200 people in Serbia.

"In the eyes of many Serbs, Milosevic's powerful opening statement only confirmed their belief in his innocence," Toncic concluded.

His full report for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting is posted in English and in Serbo-Croatian.

SERBIA STILL PROTECTS MLADIC. Serbia will not move to arrest Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic, Serbia’s Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic told the German weekly publication Der Spiegel.

"What would happen if his arrest unleashed a civil war? We have 200,000 Bosnian refugees in Serbia, many of whom possess weapons," Djindjic told Der Spiegel, according to Agence France Presse.

The U.S. has reportedly warned Yugoslav officials they face a loss of U.S. aid if Mladic isn't arrested and turned over to The Hague.

"To the fury of war crimes investigators, the Bosnian Serb military chief -- charged with genocide after the execution of an estimated 7,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995 -- has recently moved back to Belgrade after senior military friends assured him that he did not face arrest," the Sunday Telegraph of London reported, in a story posted at  .

"He is understood to be living there under the protection of Vojislav Kostunica, the Yugoslav president, and a unit of special forces troops.

"Although Mr. Kostunica ousted Slobodan Milosevic in the popular uprising of October 2000, he is also a strong Serb nationalist and outspoken critic of the war crimes tribunal. Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, believes that Mr. Kostunica is deliberately blocking her investigations and preventing access to army archives."

Meanwhile, the Croatian newspaper Novi List reported that Croatian intelligence located Mladic three times in the past two months and informed NATO, which did not attempt to arrest him, AFP says.

BUSH ADMINISTRATION TURNS FROM INTERNATIONAL PROSECUTION. American Ambassador Pierre-Richard Prosper "wants chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte to abandon plans to pursue a series of new investigations against 150 Balkan suspects who had not previously been the focus of the tribunal's attention," Press Association news reported last month.

The move is part of a Bush Administration policy favoring trials of war criminals in the country where crimes were committed, instead of establishing permanent international courts.

Such a policy puts the U.S. at odds with most of its European allies, PA reports.

MUSLIMS RETURN TO SREBRENICA REGION. About 100 Muslim refugees have returned to villages in the Srebrenica region, according to the UNHCR. That’s the largest number to attempt to go back since the war’s end, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported earlier this month.

POLICE FIRED FOR WARTIME CRIMES. UN officials fired three Bosnian Serb police officers "after discovering they had worked in wartime detention camps cited in the indictment accusing Slobodan Milosevic of genocide," Reuters reported last month. " One of the sacked police officers had been identified by witnesses as a wartime interrogator in a prison in the southeastern town of Foca, in which at least 266 Muslims were allegedly killed between June and December 1992," according to Reuters. "The other two were said to have been interrogators in wartime detention camps in the northern towns of Brcko and Bijeljina, in which hundreds of non-Serbs were tortured and killed early in the war."

Bosnians have long complained that many who committed gruesome crimes against civilians not only remain free and unpunished, but still hold positions of power in Serb-controlled parts of Bosnia.

As of last month, 20 police -- mostly Serb, but also some Croats and Muslims -- have been removed from their posts over war-crimes charges, Reuters notes.

Earlier this week, the UN dismissed 17 more police officers -- 4 for their wartime activities and 13 for postwar misconduct, AFP reported. They included Boro Ivanovic, the chief of traffic police in Foca, who was an interrogator at the notorious Foca detention area, and Gojko Macura, who rounded up civilians in the Prijedor area and deported them to the Manjaca prison camp.

In addition, two Muslim police were sacked after being accused of serving in a wartime prison where inmates were beaten and deprived of food, according to AFP.

TERRORIST MATERIALS ALLEGEDLY UNCOVERED AT SAUDI CHARITY IN BOSNIA. "NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia have discovered a cache of Islamic terrorist-related material at the offices of one of Saudi Arabia's leading aid agencies," the Guardian of London reports.

"The raid netted computer files on the use of crop duster aircraft, instructions on how to fake U.S. State Department identification badges, and photographs and maps of Washington marking government buildings. About 70,000 pounds worth of local currency was found in a safe, as well as anti-Semitic and anti-U.S. computer material for children."

The material was discovered at the Sarajevo offices of the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia.

"The new evidence will be hugely embarrassing to the Saudi royal family, which has consistently shrugged off reports that Saudi-backed charities have been used as a front for al-Qaida operatives."

Advocates of a multi-ethnic Bosnia have repeatedly expressed alarm at some post-war activities of hardline Muslim groups from the Middle East which are trying to import a more extreme, intolerant brand of Islam to a country where Muslims are largely moderate, secular, and Euro-centric. Until Sept. 11, such warnings were mostly ignored by Western officials.

THREE CHARITIES TO BE CLOSED. Bosnian officials plan to shut down three Islamic charities for suspicious finances, Bosnian television reported, according to AFP: U.S.-based Benevolence International Foundation and Global Release Foundation, along with Alharamain of Saudi Arabia.

In one instance, about 1 million convertible marks, nearly half a million U.S. dollars, were withdrawn from one of the charities' accounts for reasons that were unclear, a Bosnian official told AFP. The charity's U.S. assets have been frozen under charges that the group help funded terrorists.

TWO BOSNIAN CROAT SUSPECTS SURRENDER. "Two Bosnian Croats indicted for war crimes against Muslims during the country's 1992-95 war surrendered on Monday to local authorities in southern town of Mostar, Bosnian television reported," according to AFP.

Mostar authorities charged Petar Matic and Ante Kresic with crimes against Muslim prisoners in Stolac. U.N. war crimes prosecutors have approved holding a local trial in Mostar.

BOSNIA, CROATIA SETTLE OIL TRANSIT DISPUTE. Bosnian and Croatian officials have agreed on four border crossing points to ship oil products from Croatia into Bosnia, AFP reports.

The countries have also agreed to cooperate on fighting smuggling and organized crime.

Croatia had earlier sought to ban oil tankers transporting goods into Bosnia, in an effort to fight crime and protect its environment.

LANDMINES CLAIM ANOTHER VICTIM. Eighteen-year-old Sejfudin Tabakovic was killed earlier this month when he stepped on a landmine while trying to return to his family home near the Serb-controlled town of Bratunac, AFP reports.

Mines continue to kill civilians in Bosnia, and refugees trying to reclaim homes near former battle areas are among those at highest risk, AFP said.

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ADDITIONAL READINGS. For those interested in finding out more about events in Bosnia, BAC editors suggest the following recent articles available online:

Emerging from the Bosnian Abyss
The BBC examines the state of Bosnia-Hercegovina six years after the Dayton peace accords.
BBC, March 1, 2002

Milosevic Trial Evokes Bosnia's Suffering
Reaction in Sarajevo to the start of the Milosevic war-crimes trial
BBC, Feb. 4, 2002

Bosnia's bloody history rewritten: Analysis
A reporter who witnessed Serb soldiers' atrocities against civilians spotlights the difference between Milosevic's statements in The Hague and the grim reality on the ground.
The Guardian of London, Feb. 15, 2002

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