10 February 2004	Tuesday	18 Zilhaj 1424

SARAJEVO: Senior representatives of the international community in Bosnia announced details on Monday of a new operation aimed at apprehending the country's most wanted war criminals.

"We are launching today the next phase in our combined operation to attack the criminal networks that support (Bosnian Serb war criminal) Radovan Karadzic and other indicted war criminals in Bosnia-Herzegovina," the international community's high representative to Bosnia Paddy Ashdown said.

The operation, he said, would focus on the criminal networks that financially support Karadzic through different criminal activities, such as corruption, smuggling, money-laundering and extortion.

The entire state, Ashdown said, has been paying the price for the activities of criminal networks that support war criminals. "The ordinary citizens have been paying the price in terms of the investment and jobs which could come here to Bosnia-Herzegovina," said Ashdown.

The two most wanted indicted war criminals, Karadzic and his army commander general Ratko Mladic, Ashdown said, "also cost Bosnia- Herzegovina as it works to join the European Union and NATO structures".

The high representatives, together with the United States Ambassador to Bosnia Clifford Bond and the commander of the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) Major General Virgil Packett announced further steps in fighting Karadzic's supporting network.

Other measures include freezing financial assets to 10 Bosnian Serb officials and banning four of them from public activities. Ashdown removed the vice-president of the nationalist Serb Democratic Party (SDS), and the former member of the country's tripartite Presidency, Mirko Sarovic from his post and froze his bank accounts.

He also removed Veljko Borovcanin, Dragan Basevic, and Ivan Sarac from high positions in the Bosnian Serb Interior Ministry. This action, Ashdown said, was a follow-up to similar steps taken last year by the US government and the European Union when more than 150 people from the region were put on so-called black lists and banned from entering the US or the EU.

The US, according to Ambassador Bond, would continue to support activities against criminal networks that support war criminals seeking to evade justice. Bond again called on the Bosnian Serb authorities to be more cooperative in apprehending the war criminals.

"While there has been rhetorical support for the apprehension of war criminals from the highest level of the Bosnian Serb leadership, there has been no serious action taken in this regard," Bond told reporters.

He reminded the Bosnian Serb authorities that the lack of their cooperation with the Hague-based international Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) would "jeopardize Bosnia-Herzegovina's prospects of joining the NATO Partnership for Peace Programme and other Euro-Atlantic institutions."

Despite the reduction of troops deployed in Bosnia, SFOR would also continue its activities in getting closer to the war criminals, above all Radovan Karadzic. Commenting on the recent unsuccessful SFOR operation to catch the fugitive, Packett said the troops were close enough to Karadzic a month ago when they searched two of his houses in the former Bosnian Serb stronghold Pale. -DPA