March 2, 2002	Saturday	Zilhaj 17, 1422

SARAJEVO, March 1: NATO troops again swooped on a remote Bosnian village on Friday in a bid to capture top war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, but for the second day running the raid ended in embarrassing failure.

The NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) said the second raid on Celibici in southeast Bosnia in 24 hours was launched in response to new intelligence that the Bosnian Serb wartime leader was still hiding out there.

The failure of the two high-profile operations in successive days will come as a major blow to SFOR, which has in the past been criticised for failing to arrest Karadzic and other war crimes suspects.

NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said that even though the raids had ended in failure, it was merely a matter of time before alliance troops found and arrested Karadzic.

“Obviously I was disappointed that Karadzic was not detained this time,” Robertson told reporters in Brussels.

“But this is not the end of the story,” he warned.

“This is not the first time that we have launched such an operation to arrest Karadzic and it will not be the last. We are not going to give up.”

Bosnian Serb leaders have warned of massive unrest if Karadzic or fugitive Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladic were arrested, and concern has been raised over the safety of the 18,000 SFOR troops in Bosnia.

Karadzic is believed to be under heavy guard and fears have been expressed that any attempt to capture him could end in a bloodbath.

Those fears appeared to be confirmed when Bosnian Serb war veterans organisation blasted the attempt to arrest Karadzic as “a brutal assault on Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serb entity) citizens and their property.”

They accused SFOR of staging a show of force, warning that the arrest attempts could have “far-reaching consequences.”

Both Karadzic, 56, and Mladic, 58, have been indicted for war crimes and genocide committed during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, including the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of 6,500 Muslims in Srebrenica.

There have been growing calls for Karadzic and Mladic to be turned over to the UN tribunal in The Hague since the start earlier this month of the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.

Bosnian Serb police spokesman Zoran Glusac told AFP the operation on Friday took place in the area near the southeastern town of Foca around the villages of Zavajt, Mestrevac and Celebici.

Robertson said he had “a solemn message” for Karadzic.

“Time is running out. One day, whether it is tomorrow, or next week or next month, SFOR will come for you...The net is closing in...and there is no way of escape. There is no final place to hide.”

Karadzic is believed to be hiding out in the remote region around the town of Foca, around 70 kilometres from Sarajevo, near the Montenegrin border.

He is said to move from house to house on a nightly basis, at times even crossing the border into Montenegro.

The SFOR raid on Thursday on Celibici failed to find Karadzic although it did succeed