NATO ground troops and helicopters launched a massive operation in a remote part of south-eastern Bosnia yesterday in their hunt for their most-wanted war crimes suspect, Radovan Karadzic.
Troops from the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR), which has already made two high-profile but failed attempts to capture Karadzic (57) this year, surrounded one of his suspected hideouts in Republika Srpska, the Serb part of Bosnia.
The elusive wartime Bosnian Serb leader is wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal for genocide and war crimes his troops allegedly committed against Muslims and Croats during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.
"Although the focus of the operation is not an attempt to apprehend Radovan Karadzic, SFOR remains capable of apprehending him should the opportunity present itself," a SFOR spokesman, Mr Scott Lundy, said.
Any arrest would be an "unexpected but happy outcome," he said, adding that the operation could run for several days.
The Serbian news agency Beta quoted a source close to SFOR as saying it was NATO's biggest operation yet aimed at arresting Karadzic.
Witnesses said a dozen SFOR vehicles were blocking the remote village of Celebici, near the border of the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, where NATO troops have twice tried to capture Karadzic.
SFOR has received "a large quantity of information concerning Karadzic's base of operation" in the area following its failed bids to arrest him on February 28th and March 1st, the force said in a statement. - (AFP)