Posted on 07/12/2004 7:06:18 PM PDT by a_Turk
WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. commander of peacekeepers in Bosnia said Monday his forces are beginning to "shut off and strangle" the network backing Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader wanted by a U.N. war crimes tribunal. "We've shut down six or seven businesses that have been known to support Karadzic," said Maj. Gen. Virgil L. Packett, who commands the 12,000 peacekeepers in Bosnia. About 900 are Americans. The peacekeepers are under the NATO flag until the end of the year, when the European Union will take over.
Packett, speaking at a House Armed Services Committee forum on Bosnia, said Karadzic's network also is being hampered by travel bans and the freezing of their assets.
"They no longer have freedom of action, they can't move through Europe, they can no longer continue to move money back and forth," he said.
Karadzic was indicted for genocide in 1995, along with his top general, Ratko Mladic, for the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims from the enclave of Srebrenica.
They are among 20 fugitives still sought by the tribunal.
More than 20,000 people gathered Sunday in Srebrenica to rebury the remains of some of the more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys killed there. It was the ninth anniversary of the massacre.
Appearing with Packett before the committee were Maj. Gen. James Darden, of the U.S. European Command; Igor Davidovic, Bosnia's ambassador to Washington; and Mirza Kusljugic, its ambassador the United Nations.
All expressed varying degrees of optimism about Bosnia's future in the aftermath of the Bosnia's brutal 1992-95 ethnic war.
The two Bosnian envoys said their country's goal is membership in European institutions, starting with the Partnership for Peace, a continental security group founded after the Cold War.
Bosnia had hoped to have been admitted at the recent NATO summit in Istanbul, Turkey, but was turned down. NATO officials said the rejection came partly because the Bosnian government has not cooperated fully with the war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia, headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands.
The Bosnian nation-building experiment generally is considered among the most successful of many that have been tried over the past dozen years or so, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo and Haiti.
"Success is on the horizon," Hackett said, alluding to Bosnia. "The country has demonstrated that it can come together and work in a positive vein."
Isn't it funny how we got bogged down there, in part, to protect the integrity of the NATO alliance?
The what?
Bosnia and Kosovo tie up what, three divisions? (one in, one rotating out and one training to go in). Whatever the failings of the European militaries, you figure they could cobble together a sufficient garrison force and chase old Radovan around.
Anyway, you know my feeling on Radovan and his ilk. Though he probably isn't as bad as the Western media has made him out to be, he still deserves a short rope and a long drop.
But, hey, what do I know? I'm just a "genocidal Croat."
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