Karadzic will not surrender says his wife By Zeljko Debelnogic PALE, Bosnia, July 5 (Reuters) - The wife of Bosnian Serb wartime leader and fugitive war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic said on Thursday her husband would not surrender to international justice and testify against Slobodan Milosevic. Ljiljana Zelen-Karadzic [hmmm...funny how the wife of the man who supposedly directed a racist, genocidal and masoginistic campaign of rape has kept her familly name. I wonder how many wives of NATO leaders were allowed to do the same?] denied as misinformation talk that her husband would give himself up to the tribunal in The Hague and testify against his former patron, ex-Yugoslav President Milosevic, in exchange for a lighter sentence. The swift rebuttal of a Western news agency report that Karadzic was ready to turn himself in threw cold water over hopes Karadzic and Bosnian Serb wartime military chief Ratko Mladic could soon be following Milosevic. "I thought it (the rumour) had to be taken with a pinch of salt and the pinch of salt came today," said Jean-Jacques Joris, political advisor to chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte, who wants more Bosnian Serb cooperation with the court. "The attitude of Radovan Karadzic towards that tribunal has not changed, nor will it change under any conditions," Zelen-Karadzic said in a statement released in Karadzic's wartime stronghold of Pale, east of Sarajevo. The extradition of Milosevic last week has put pressure on the Bosnian Serb authorities to arrest Karadzic and Mladic, the most prominent indicted war criminals still at large. But both men are extremely well protected and neither Bosnian Serbs nor the 20,000 NATO troops keeping the peace in Bosnia, and charged with arresting war criminals, have shown much appetite for going after them. BELIEVED TO BE HIDING IN EASTERN BOSNIA Karadzic and Mladic have been on the run since 1995 and are believed to be hiding in Serb-held eastern Bosnia. Mladic also enjoys a degree of Yugoslav Army protection and is still popular with Bosnian Serbs for his robust wartime leadership. They have been indicted twice by the tribunal, for the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica but both reject the court's authority. Some 200,000 people died in Bosnia's 1992-95 war, which ended with the Dayton peace treaty that split the Balkan country into a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serb republic. Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Mladen Ivanic [who was appointed by Bosnia's Austrian governor after election results were anulled] said on Wednesday the arrest of the two loomed closer and it would be made easier after the adoption of a law on cooperation with the tribunal. Ivanic, who was starting a three-day visit to the tribunal, denied he knew their whereabouts and criticised the West for not handing over information needed to grab fugitives. But a spokesman for Wolfgang Petritsch, the top peace overseer in Bosnia, said Ivanic's government did not need either the law or outside assistance for the arrests. "PRACTICAL AND LEGAL COMPETENCE" "They have the competence, both the practical and legal competence, so I would not see that there is any argument that they are incapable of finding and arresting these people," Kevin Sullivan told Reuters. Mark Wheeler, of the International Crisis Group think-tank, said it was "inconceivable" that Ivanic's government would order Bosnian Serb military or police to arrest Karadzic or Mladic. The government relies on crucial support from the nationalist Serb Democratic Party, founded by Karadzic in 1990 and belived to be still under his influence. "He (Ivanic) is simply delegated by the SDS to present an acceptable face of the Serb republic," he said. Wheeler said the international community and the Bosnian Serbs kept throwing the ball into each other's court over who has to carry out the arrests. "I think that the Serb republic has a more accurate grasp of the situation. If the arrests are to be made it will have to be done by SFOR," he said. The 20,000-strong NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) has also been criticised by prosecutor del Ponte for not doing enough to arrest Karadzic and Mladic. "SFOR is fully committed to work with the IC (international community) in bringing the remaining fugitives to justice," SFOR spokesman Captain John Ruth told reporters. 10:49 07-05-01 Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/