SARAJEVO: Instead of being behind bars, the most wanted Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic’s face can be seen on calendars for 2004 and other souvenirs offered across the Srpska Republic.

More than eight years after the first international indictment was issued against him for war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Karadzic remains at large and his whereabouts are still unknown to his hunters.

Bosnian media are focusing once again on Radovan Karadzic now that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has been captured.

“If they were able to catch Hussein, what stops them (the international troops in Bosnia) to catch Karadzic,” the Bosnian public asked soon after Hussein’s capture.

According to the international community’s high representative to Bosnia, British politician Paddy Ashdown, capturing Karadzic would be even more important for the Balkans than Saddam’s for Iraq.

“If the world is going to be a safer place with Saddam Hussein facing justice, it would be even safer with Karadzic and (his army commander general Ratko) Mladic in The Hague (at the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ICTY),” Ashdown said in an interview with Bosnian State Radio.

“I am sure,” Ashdown said, “that Karadzic and Mladic could be captured in the same way like Saddam Hussein was captured.”

The 12,000 strong Nato-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia has tried several times to locate and detain Karadzic, but all their operations failed.

Attempts by SFOR and the international community’s representatives in Bosnia to close in on Karadzic and bring his support network under their control did not yield any results either.

Nevertheless, SFOR said, “the operation to arrest Karadzic never stopped.”

“We are constantly conducting our operations 24 hours a day, seven days a week to catch Karadzic,” a spokesman for SFOR Captain Dave Sullivan said.

“They (war criminals) can run, but they cannot hide forever,” he added. The ICTY representatives still hope that Karadzic will soon appear before the tribunal in The Hague.

“We keep our hopes that Radovan Karadzic would be arrested soon. Such hopes in fact exist since the indictment was raised against him more than eight years ago,” a spokesman for the ICTY in Sarajevo Refik Hodzic said. His arrest remains one of the tribunal’s priorities, he added.

Hodzic also quoted Chief ICTY Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte as saying, “the ICTY will not close its doors until Karadzic is arrested and brought before the tribunal.”

The international community, Hodzic said, expects more cooperation from the Bosnian Serb side.

Even though the new Bosnian Serb government promised improved cooperation and more efforts to close in on the fugitives, they have still not succeeded in capturing Karadzic, Hodzic said.

Bosnia-Herzegovina’s Foreign Minister Mladen Ivanic believes the international community has an equal responsibility to catch the war criminals.

“My opinion is that the responsibility for fulfilling our obligations towards the ICTY lies equally on both the local Bosnian institutions and the international community,” said Ivanic.

He also said that the war criminals issue remains “the last political challenge for Bosnia-Herzegovina,” and that the country’s development depends on it.

After many successful reforms in Bosnia aimed at bringing the country closer to Euro-Atlantic integration, Karadzic’s arrest remains the main obstacle to that objective.

According to the Unites States ambassador to Bosnia-Herzegovina Clifford Bond, Bosnia would stay “at the edge of Europe,” as long as Karadzic is at large.—dpa