Wife Adds to Rumors About Bosnian War-Crimes Suspect

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia —  The wife of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on Saturday added to the speculation surrounding her husband’s possible surrender to a war crimes court, saying Karadzic will “never” give himself up.

Ljiljana Karadzic’s defense of her husband was echoed by his closest political ally, Momcilo Krajisnik, the Bosnian Serb member of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s three-person presidency.

At the same time, however, reports in Belgrade suggested that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has been drawn into negotiations aimed at easing Karadzic’s surrender.

The contradictions Saturday were typical of the past week’s swirl of speculation about whether Karadzic will end up at the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague, where he faces double indictment on genocide and related charges.

U.S. officials and diplomats in Bosnia and elsewhere in Europe are predicting that Karadzic’s days of freedom are numbered.

“He will never, ever turn himself in voluntarily, and he will oppose any eventual attempt to arrest, illegally kidnap or capture him,” Mrs. Karadzic said in a statement carried by the Bosnian Serb news agency, SRNA.

“Rumors” to the contrary, she said, are false.

“He will never recognize The Hague,” which is merely laying the groundwork “not for trial but for a lynching and the condemnation of all Serbian people,” she said.

Mrs. Karadzic said she was responding to statements in recent days by Western diplomats who maintain that Karadzic--increasingly isolated, with his paramilitary police hobbled by NATO--is attempting to set terms for his surrender to the tribunal in The Hague.

She said her husband has not authorized any appearances on his behalf before the court, but she did announce the formation of an “international committee” for the defense of Radovan Karadzic.

Mrs. Karadzic’s statement should be taken with a grain of salt. She is known for her fiercely loyal support of her husband, and her comments were clearly aimed at burnishing his honor and displaying the kind of defiance that was a hallmark of the anti-Western Karadzic leadership during 3 1/2 years of devastating war in Bosnia.

But speculation that Karadzic will soon surrender may also be premature.

His maneuvering room is certainly diminished, with military and political pressure on alleged war criminals growing and with Bosnian Serb moderates in the ascendant.

Yet, since the summer of last year, Karadzic has been floating trial balloons suggesting ways that he would be willing to stand trial. Nothing has come of those gestures.

Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic, whose U.S.-backed challenge to Karadzic finally helped dislodge him from power, said last year that she had been asked to assist in efforts to find a face-saving way to get him to The Hague. Those efforts similarly failed to prosper.

Diplomats in Washington and in European capitals are especially eager to give credit to any overture from the Karadzic camp. Western political and military leaders, fearing casualties, have hoped to avoid having to arrest Karadzic.

Putting a different spin on matters, Krajisnik said Saturday in the Bosnian Serb town of Pale that reports of an imminent surrender were without basis.

“All claims that [Karadzic] will surrender voluntarily have no foundation,” Krajisnik said after a meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Bosnia, Richard Kauzlarich.

Contradicting Krajisnik’s public statements, however, Belgrade newspapers said Saturday that Krajisnik reported to Milosevic on Thursday that Karadzic was willing to turn himself in under a number of conditions and that a proposal laying out the conditions will be presented to authorities in The Hague this week.

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Other Karadzic associates have said he is most concerned about the treatment he would receive while in prison and that he wants guarantees he will not be drugged or abused.

One of Karadzic’s several lawyers said late last week that no progress had been made in striking any deal on surrender conditions.

This latest round of speculation about Karadzic’s intentions and actions began last month, when Carlos Westendorp, the senior Western diplomat in charge of Bosnian peacekeeping, told a meeting in Brussels that Karadzic would probably surrender this month.

A major show of force April 2 by North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops raiding a Pale police barracks, a short distance from Karadzic’s home, stoked the suspicions.

NATO troops then arrested two Bosnian Serbs indicted by The Hague tribunal on charges of having run a concentration camp during the Bosnian war, which ended with U.S.-brokered peace accords in December 1995.

Formally, the court in The Hague does not “negotiate” with the suspects it has indicted. However, it has tacitly allowed third parties to do so in the past.

In October, the U.S. special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, negotiated the surrender of 10 Bosnian Croats who had been indicted for the killing of Muslim civilians and other war crimes.

Among other terms, Gelbard promised the suspects quick trials, according to sources familiar with the discussions.

Bosnian Serb writer Momir Vojvodic, an associate of Karadzic’s, said he met the former Bosnian Serb president last week in a “secret location” in Bosnia, the Belgrade daily Dnevni Telegraf reported Saturday.

Vojvodic quoted Karadzic as saying that he will go to The Hague when he is good and ready--and that he will name names if and when he goes.

“Karadzic has no intention of begging around the world for favorable conditions for his departure to The Hague,” Vojvodic said. “He will go there of his own free will, when he estimates the moment has come to do that.”