http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=112651&d=11&m=8&y=2008
Monday 11 August 2008 (08 Sha`ban 1429)
Clinton, Chirac blocked Karadzic's arrest'
DPA
BELGRADE: Former US and French Presidents Bill Clinton and Jacques Chirac
"personally" blocked plans to arrest the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic,
wanted for a genocide trial over the past 13 years, a former official of the UN
war crimes tribunal said in an interview published yesterday.
Florence Hartmann, a former spokeswoman of the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecutor, said in an interview with
the daily Blic that "sometimes the arrest was blocked personally by Chirac,
another time it was Clinton."
Karadzic was arrested in July in Belgrade after 13 years on the run. ICTY
accused him in 1995 of genocide and leveled other charges over his role in
atrocities such as the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica during the
1992-95 Bosnian War. The former president of the Serb entity in Bosnia,
Karadzic claims that he made a deal with the former US envoy, Richard
Holbrooke, to withdraw from politics and fade away and so avoid arrest and
trial.
During his run from justice, ICTY had "abundant" information which could
have led to Karadzic's arrest, Hartmann claimed. In her words, apart from
France and the United States, Britain also blocked the arrest.
She speculated that Karadzic was finally arrested because the US realized
that he would remain an obstacle to the region's future if he were to be
allowed freedom of movement.
Hartmann said "Karadzic's arrest was less of a problem for Serbia than
the West," but did not elaborate.
Also, Serbia needs to bring all war crime fugitives to justice to clear
the key hurdle blocking its path to European Union membership.
After Karadzic's arrest, only the Bosnian Serb wartime military chief,
Ratko Mladic, and the Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic remain on the loose.
Local media speculate that Karadzic's arrest was a signal of Belgrade's
resolve to close the troublesome ICTY chapter, which had kept it under limited
isolation over the past eight years and that Mladic would be arrested during
the late summer lull.
In a separate interview, Mladic's brother Dusan told Blic how the
general, who personally commanded operations in Srebrenica, would commit
suicide rather than be arrested. A similar claim was made by another relative
last week.
