Nato: Nato has intensified its hunt for top Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic as the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre approaches, raiding the homes of both his wife and son in 24 hours.
The back-to-back operations were conducted on Wednesday and yesterday in Pale, former stronghold of Karadzic's breakaway Bosnian Serb republic in the 1992-95 war, which produced Europe's worst massacre since the second World War.
Karadzic was indicted for genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague for his role in the slaughter of 7,400 Muslim men at Srebrenica beginning on July 11th, 1995, and continuing for several days.
But Nato did not expect to find him in either of the Pale homes this week, spokesman Derek Chappel said. "Today we are in the home of Sasa Karadzic and again we are looking for evidence and information about movements and whereabouts of Karadzic, his support network and other war crimes suspects.
"If we had information that Karadzic was hiding somewhere, it would be a different kind of operation."
Hague prosecutor Carla del Ponte has said she fervently hopes he and his former military commander Ratko Mladic will be in custody in time for the upcoming Srebrenica anniversary in seven weeks, as proof that justice can finally be done.
The two raids were an unmistakable signal that the Nato alliance, having handed over Bosnia peacekeeping to a European Union force, is now concentrating on the war crimes manhunt.
Yesterday morning, dozens of US soldiers cordoned off Sasa Karadzic's apartment block in Pale town centre, 16 km (10 miles) in the mountains east of Sarajevo.
It began less than 24 hours after US troops ringed Ljiljana Karadzic's home with an array of military vehicles and searched it.
Sarajevo political analyst Antonio Prlenda said Nato, the EU peace force and the entire international community in Bosnia were under pressure to show they were after Karadzic and Mladic. "I would like to think they are acting based on some new intelligence, but it could be that they're just pretending they are doing something," Mr Prlenda said.
Karadzic (59) and fellow fugitive Mladic (63) also face genocide charges for the 43-month siege of Sarajevo. They are among a group of nine Serb and one Croatian war crimes suspects who have so far eluded arrest.