Bosnian Serbs warned to stop protecting Karadzic

UN war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte warned Bosnian Serb authorities to stop protecting fugitive former leader Radovan Karadzic…

UN war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte warned Bosnian Serb authorities to stop protecting fugitive former leader Radovan Karadzic, wanted on genocide and war crimes charges.

"Republika Srpska (RS) must stop protecting Karadzic... Karadzic

must be arrested," Ms Del Ponte said after meeting Paddy Ashdown, the top international representative in Bosnia.

Republika Srpska (RS) is the Serb-run entity of Bosnia. It and the Muslim-Croat Federation make up present-day Bosnia under the Dayton peace agreement that ended the country's 1992-95 war.

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"I am tired of coming down to this country to ask for the arrest of fugitives and in particular for Karadzic," Del Ponte said.

The RS remains the only part of the former Yugoslavia yet to arrest a war crime suspect figuring on the wanted list of the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), of which Ms Del Ponte is chief prosecutor.

The ICTY is still seeking 23 war crimes suspects including the two most wanted -- Karadzic, Bosnian Serb wartime leader, and Ratko Mladic, his military commander.

Karadzic has been indicted by the ICTY for genocide and war crimes committed during Bosnia's war, including the siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica.