Breaking News, World News and Taiwan News.

Updated Wednesday, July 23, 2008 0:00 am TWN, By Aleksandra Niksic, AFP



	Serbian newspaper front pages display pictures of Radovan Karadzic and headlines reading: “Arrested”, as published in Belgrade, Serbia, Tuesday, July 22. Karadzic, a top war crimes suspect, was arrested Monday in Serbia, the Serbian president and the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia said. (AP) More Photos (2)

Sponsors
▪	Save 75% for all hotels in Shanghai, Beijing and whole China. Lowest rates for Flights in China.
▪	Get the best deals for Guangzhou Hotels or choose from more than 10,000 hotels in 499 Chinese cities.
▪	Find great real time deals on China Flights. Book flights to China or China domestic flights 24/7.
▪	Buy china wholesale products from reliable chinese wholesalers on DHgate.com!

Serbia captures fugitive wartime leader Karadzic

Karadzic’s arrest was welcomed by the United States, the European Union, and the U.N. war crimes court.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon hailed it as “a historic moment for the victims” and praised Serbia for taking a “decisive step” toward ending impunity for those indicted for war crimes.

Bosnian Croats and Muslims, against whom Karadzic waged a barbaric campaign of “ethnic cleansing” in the early 1990s, see him as a murderous megalomaniac.

“I had lost all hope that this would ever happen. But the wheels of justice grind slowly,” said Sejo Hodzic, who was shot by a sniper during the Sarajevo siege.

While Muslims staged noisy celebrations on Sarajevo’s streets, Serbs in Karadzic’s wartime stronghold of Pale expressed their anger and disappointment.

“It’s not fair. Only Serbs stand war crimes trials at The Hague,” said Slavko Vasic, 45.

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, who served as a mediator in the Balkans conflict, hailed the capture of Karadzic as “late, late, late, but good, good, good.”

“A major thug has been removed from the scene,” former U.S. envoy to the Balkans Richard Holbrooke said, describing Karadzic as the “Osama bin Laden of Europe.”

But the Russian Foreign Ministry stressed any trial should be “impartial,” accusing the U.N. court of “an often biased approach.”

Karadzic’s lawyer Svetozar Vujacic said his client would appeal the decision to transfer him to The Hague, while his brother stated Karadzic and his family were “optimistic” he could beat the war crimes charges.

“Thank God, my brother is alive and healthy. I can say that he is bursting with optimism,” said Luka Karadzic.

In the bitter war against Bosnia’s Muslim-led government, Karadzic is said to have authorised “ethnic cleansing” in which more than a million non-Serbs were driven from their homes in villages where they had lived for generations.

The expulsions were accompanied, according to foreign observers, by widespread killings and up to 20,000 rapes in a calculated program of terror.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he hoped Karadzic’s arrest would now help unblock a key EU-Serbia accord.

The Netherlands, which backed by Belgium is the last EU member country to hold out on the application of the EU rapprochement agreement, urged Serbia to continue cooperating with the U.N. tribunal.

1|2