BOSNIA: NATO troops in Bosnia blocked roads and checked vehicles and passengers yesterday as part of a stepped-up campaign to hunt down wartime Serb leader and genocide suspect Radovan Karadzic.
The NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) searched remote areas near the Montenegrin border for a second day, targeting people who help one of the world's most wanted men to remain at large almost seven years after the 1992-95 war ended.
The operation got under way on Wednesday when soldiers backed by helicopters hovering overhead moved into the eastern village of Celebici, where SFOR failed to catch Karadzic in swoops in February and March.
"We continue our movement in the area," SFOR spokesman Mr Scott Lundy said in Sarajevo. "The focus is not changed." The force said it was targeting Karadzic's "base of operation" and support network in southeastern Bosnia and that the action might last several days.
"By support network, I mean the circle of people who shelter, feed, alert, guard and move Karadzic in an effort to keep him from justice," Mr Lundy later told a news conference.
Karadzic, twice indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for genocide during the conflict, is widely believed to be hiding in eastern Bosnia or Montenegro, Serbia's smaller partner in the Yugoslav federation.
German soldiers set up barricades on two roads leading to mountainous Montenegro, reinforcing them with sandbags and barbed wire.
They checked buses in a search for weapons and questioned passengers.
French soldiers erected a checkpoint on a road by the nearby town of Foca, inspecting travellers' documents.
A German commander said soldiers had confiscated weapons from a family on Wednesday but declined to give details.
Mr Lundy said SFOR had not arrested anyone so far.
SFOR insisted the operation did not aim to arrest Karadzic himself, but it was clearly an effort to tighten the net around him.
Karadzic was a key figure in Europe's worst conflict since the second World War, in which more than 200,000 people died.
"Certainly for Mr Karadzic, the noose is closing," Mr Lundy said.
He declined to say whether SFOR knew Karadzic was in Bosnia.
"That is considered to be an operational detail. However SFOR does know the general whereabouts of Radovan Karadzic," he said.
Mr Lundy said SFOR was checking information it had gathered in the past several months about Karadzic and his support network. - (Reuters)