SARAJEVO, June 17: Radovan Karadzic is not considering giving himself up for trial before a UN war crimes court, according to the wife of the Bosnian Serb wartime leader who has been on the run since 1996.

“His position and chosen path cannot be altered by anything, not even by my own efforts, not even if my family or I had a will to change his mind,” she said in a letter published on Monday by the Bosnian Serb weekly newspaper Patriot.

The published letter, written by Lijljana Zelen-Karadzic, is a copy of one sent to NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia 11 days ago, according to the paper.

The letter, which Karadzic family members confirmed to Reuters was authentic, came as bad news to the NATO-led peacekeepers who have twice failed to nab Karadzic this year.

NATO finds itself regularly on the defensive over its failure to capture Karadzic, which Hague chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte attributed to a lack of will. When the Karadzic letter arrived this month, the NATO force thought the man himself had at last decided to establish contact by writing to US General John Sylvester, who commands the peace force, to accept a proposed meeting. The peacekeepers later said the letter was in fact from Karadzic’s wife.

The newspaper also on Monday published a letter that Sylvester had sent to Karadzic via his wife proposing the meeting.

“I am willing to organise a meeting with your husband so we can talk about his voluntary surrender,” Sylvester said in the letter published by the paper. “If something of that kind would be inconvenient, I am willing to organise a meeting with an intermediary who would act on his behalf,” he said.

Sylvester may have hoped that Karadzic would be influenced by seeing a number of indicted figures from Serbia hand themselves over voluntarily to The Hague in recent weeks. But he got a familiar, second-hand reply.

“It is completely clear that my husband’s response to the proposed meeting is negative, and it is also clear that no one from his family is going to work on his surrender,” Zelen-Karadzic wrote.—Reuters