Nato steps up Karadzic hunt after Croat's arrest

Nato stepped up the hunt for top Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic yesterday, saying it was under pressure to find him after the arrest in Spain last week of a top Croatian fugitive.

A Nato spokesman said alliance and European Union soldiers raided the home of a suspected Karadzic supporter to seek information about the former Bosnian Serb leader, indicted for genocide by the UN war crimes court in The Hague.

Yesterday's operation in Pale, Mr Karadzic's stronghold in the 1992-95 Bosnia war, followed a weekend police raid in neighbouring Montenegro - where he has also been reported to be hiding since going underground in 1997.

Police searched the house of Mr Karadzic's brother Luka and seized mobile telephone chips.

"These kinds of operations are even more important now," Nato spokesman Derek Chappell told Reuters. He said the arrest of Croat general Ante Gotovina last week had intensified pressure to bring in top fugitives still at large.

Mr Gotovina was arrested last Thursday in Spain's Canary Islands after more than four years on the run, removing a major obstacle to Croatia's drive for EU membership.

He appeared before the tribunal yesterday to answer charges related to the murders of 150 Serb civilians by his troops during and after the Croatian army's recapture of the Krajina enclave in 1995.

His arrest leaves six Serbs and Bosnian Serbs sought by The Hague still at large, piling additional pressure on Bosnia's Serb Republic, the authorities of Serbia and Montenegro, and Nato, to arrest them.

The West insists Mr Karadzic and his former military commander Ratko Mladic must go to the Hague to stand trail for the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim in Srebrenica before Serbia and Bosnia can join the EU and Nato.

Their ability to elude capture also embarrasses Nato, which has been accused of not trying hard enough to arrest them, despite a number of high profile raids and a crackdown on their alleged network of supporters.

"The world is watching for Mr Mladic and Mr Karadzic to be delivered to the Hague and it's essential that these operations continue to put pressure on a support network that allows them to remain at large," Mr Chappell said.

Mr Mladic is widely believed to be hiding in Serbia, protected by elements in the military. Nato said he visited his wartime bunker in eastern Bosnia in mid-2004. Mr Karadzic is thought to have hideouts in Bosnia, Montenegro and Serbia.

Nato handed over peacekeeping duties to the EU force EUFOR a year ago to concentrate on the war crimes hunt and fighting terrorism. It insists Bosnian Serb authorities carry the primary responsibility for tracking down suspects.

But analysts say Nato itself is desperate to fix what is arguably the biggest failure of its decade-long deployment in Bosnia, and that is why it has carried out dozens of raids, detentions and interrogations in the past year.

Nato insists the actions are not for show and that they weaken Mr Karadzic's support network and yield clues to his movements. But so far they have produced no tangible result.