STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Sopranos fanatics, this one is for you. Tony Soprano's autographed Suburban is available for purchase on eBayTM. James Gandolfini has personally signed the vehicle. Find this and over 800 other Sopranos items for sale on eBay. http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/ebay ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "If they kill him, none of them will get out alive." [Lord Robertson's and Carla Del Ponte's Balkanskorps just happen to be conducting a major "training exercise" at the very moment they're clamoring for the heads of former Bosnian Serb leaders. And the Humanitarian Legion involved includes troops from the feudal monarchy of Morocco, fresh, no doubt, from occupation, repression and ethnicide in the Western Sahara.] July 18, 2001 NATO Troops Training in Bosnia by ALEXANDAR S. DRAGICEVIC Associated Press Writer SCEPAN POLJE, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) -- Thousands of NATO troops launched a routine training exercise Wednesday in eastern Bosnia, where the U.N. war crimes tribunal's two most-wanted suspects are believed to be hiding. Although the annual exercise officially has nothing to do with the hunt for former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his wartime military leader, Gen. Ratko Mladic, it raised expectations the two fugitives indicted for genocide in the Bosnian war won't elude authorities for long. The three-day exercise involves 2,000 NATO troops from Germany, Spain, France, Italy and Morocco. It began in the village of Kalinovik, Mladic's birthplace. The NATO-led force, which is made up of 19,500 troops from 34 countries, is in charge of keeping the peace in Bosnia, but it occasionally arrests war crimes suspects and hands them over to the tribunal based in The Hague, Netherlands. Speculation that the arrests of Karadzic and Mladic could be imminent has soared since former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was handed over to the U.N. court last month. Karadzic is believed to be on the run within Bosnia, often changing his hide-outs in an attempt to evade capture. Mladic was seen in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, as recently as last month, but is said to frequently cross into neighboring Bosnia. Both were indicted for genocide for atrocities their forces committed during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, including the infamous massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica. NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson warned last week it was only a matter of time before Karadzic and Mladic were captured, but he cautioned that Bosnian suspects are not always in the country and sometimes hide in neighboring nations where NATO peacekeepers have no jurisdiction to act. Bosnians interpreted his remarks as a reference to the area along the Bosnia-Montenegro border, where both suspects come from and are believed to be hiding. Karadzic was born in a small village in the mountains on the Montenegrin side, where special police forces loyal to Montenegro's pro-Western government are rumored to be trying to hunt him down in cooperation with NATO forces on the Bosnian side. The Montenegrin government officially denies Karadzic is in its territory, but says it will arrest him if he strays across. However, a high-ranking government official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that special forces were in the area. That official refused to say how many troops were there or to link their deployment to Karadzic. Karadzic's supporters fear the military exercise might be a cover for an operation under way to nab him. Just to the north, in the border town of Visegrad, a 50-year-old man who gave his name only as Milan B. said Karadzic could be killed in such an operation, and if that happened, his supporters would exact brutal revenge on NATO soldiers. ''If they kill him, none of them will get out of here alive,'' he said. Officers stationed at the Scepan Polje border crossing between Bosnia and Montenegro said they had received hundreds of phone calls over the past two days from local and foreign journalists inquiring about the timing of the military exercise. French Gen. Maurice Amargera, who is in charge of the sector, told reporters the exercise was routine and had been announced in advance. ''I would be surprised if we would encounter Karadzic or Mladic,'' he said. However, if it happened, ''we would just arrest them and I would be very proud. Surprised, but proud.'' __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
