NATO Fails to Detain Bosnian Serb

The resolve of the NATO-led peacekeeping force to apprehend indicted war crimes suspects was called into question Wednesday when NATO officials acknowledged that troops had encountered Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic but did not detain him.

NATO officials said peacekeeping troops spotted Karadzic four or five times Tuesday in the northern town of Banja Luka, where the Bosnian Serb leader keeps an office and where U.N. High Representative Carl Bildt was meeting with Bosnian Serb and Bosnian government officials.

Karadzic was said to be heavily guarded, and U.S. Adm. Leighton W. Smith, commander of the peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Herzegovina, said a confrontation could have set off a deadly shootout.

Karadzic has been indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Smith has said North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops would not “hunt down” war crimes suspects but would apprehend them if they came across suspects in the course of regular duties.

Last week, the NATO peacekeeping force, known as IFOR, distributed posters of Karadzic and 50 other indictees to troops in the field, in response to news reports--later found to be false--that Karadzic had passed freely through NATO checkpoints.

An IFOR spokesman said that, on Tuesday, Karadzic did not come into contact with an IFOR patrol or checkpoint, and that the soldiers that saw him were “generally in pairs” and did not have the strength of numbers to detain him. NATO officials did not explain why additional troops were not summoned to assist in detaining Karadzic.