AP Report: Karadzic probably has missing original of peace agreement Fri Feb 15, 2008 3:50 pm (PST)
<http://calibre.mworld.com/m/m.w?lp=GetStory&id=293566601> http://calibre.mworld.com/m/m.w?lp=GetStory&id=293566601 Report: Karadzic probably has missing original of peace agreement that ended Bosnian war Released : Friday, February 15, 2008 6:13 AM SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina-The missing original copy of the peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war might be in the hands of Radovan Karadzic, Bosnia's most wanted war crimes suspect, local media reported Friday. Members of the Bosnian Serb delegation were quoted as telling daily newspaper Press RS that after the peace agreement was signed in Paris, it "was most likely put in Karadzic's safe." On Thursday, the head of the three-member Bosnian presidency, Zeljko Komsic, said the document was missing from the presidency's archives. The U.S.-brokered peace agreement, reached in Dayton, Ohio, ended the Bosnian 1992-95 war. It was officially signed in Paris and each of the signatories got their own copy. "I suppose the document was given to the President of the Republika Srpska (Karadzic) for safe keeping," Vladimir Lukic, who was at the time the head negotiator for the Bosnian Serbs, was quoted as saying in Press RS. "If it wasn't sad, it would be funny," said Miroslav Lajcak, the Slovak diplomat who is appointed under the terms of the Dayton agreement as the top international administrator in the ethnically-divided country. Lajcak told Bosnian television that the Bosnian public need not worry as the copy of the document in Paris will not disappear. Bosnia was ravaged by Europe's worst fighting since World War II from 1992-95. Some 260,000 people were killed and 1.8 million became refugees. The country is now in turmoil again because the Dayton agreement divided Bosnia into two mini-states, a Bosnian Serb Republic, called Republika Srpska and a Muslim-Croat federation, and the Bosnian Serbs are resisting efforts to unite the country, which is demanded by the European Union as a condition of bringing it closer to possible membership. Komsic told reporters that the presidency will launch an investigation to determine the whereabouts of the document. Karadzic, the wartime Bosnian Serb leader, and Ratko Mladic, his top general, have been indicted by the U.N. War Crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, on charges of genocide and other crimes they allegedly committed during the war, including the 1995 slaughter of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. Both have eluded capture for 11 years, and NATO and EU officials believe they are being aided and funded by a network of supporters. For years, there have been no hints of where Karadzic was hiding, though Mladic is widely believed to be in Serbia.
