Bosnia's NATO-led peacekeepers have told the UN war crimes court they are planning an operation to detain top fugitive suspect Mr Radovan Karadzic, a Bosnian Serb magazine reported today, quoting Western diplomat sources in Sarajevo.
Magazine Ekstra published the story only a day after NATO troops broke into Mr Karadzic's house in his wartime stronghold of Pale, near Sarajevo, but failed to find him there.
The peacekeepers insist the raid was not aimed at detaining Mr Karazic, who has been indicted by the UN tribunal for genocide and other war crimes, but at smashing a smuggling ring.
Ekstra said the commander of the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) in Bosnia, US General John Sylvester, had presented a plan to the UN tribunal's chief prosecutor, Ms Carla del Ponte, which indicated the operation to arrest Mr Karadzic could begin on July 15th and was likely to last between two and 12 days.
The magazine did not say when Sylvester informed Del Ponte about the plan. It said some 800 members of the intelligence services - US, Serb, Muslim and Croat - had been trying to identify where the Bosnian Serb wartime leader was hiding for almost a month, with the help of former members of Mr Karadzic's security service.
According to the plan, once Mr Karadzic has been located, a 300-strong SFOR special force backed by some 20 helicopters will block the site and possible escape roads, and arrest him, Ekstra said.
Mr Karadzic has been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide and crimes against humanity committed during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
He is notably charged, along with his military chief Ratko Mladic, over the siege of Sarajevo and the July 1995 massacre of more than 7,500 Bosnian Muslims in the eastern town of Srebrenica.
SFOR carried out two failed raids to seize Mr Karadzic in February and March.
Mr Karadzic is believed to be hiding in the east of the Serb-run part of Bosnia and occasionally crosses the border into the tiny Yugoslav republic of Montenegro.