U.S. General Says Fugitives Karadzic, Mladic Closer to Capture

Bloomberg ^ | Jul 13

[Grzegorz 246]

July 12 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. Army general expressed confidence that his multinational force is closing in on Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the top war crimes fugitives in Europe, even as Bosnian officials pointed to confusion over who is responsible for capturing them.

``We are beginning to strangle them,'' said Major General Virgil Packett, commander of the Bosnia Stabilization Force, at a briefing before the House Armed Services Committee today in Washington. ``We are hearing them squeal a bit.''

With Bosnia and Herzegovina's entry into the European Union on hold until the men can be detained under United Nations war crimes indictments, Bosnian officials and U.S. commanders are pushing harder than ever to find Karadzic, 59, the former leader of the Bosnian Serbs, and Mladic, 61, the former chief of the Bosnian Serb military.

The renewed effort comes almost nine years after the start of the massacre of Muslim men and boys near the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, one of the landmark atrocities of the Balkan wars.

SFOR, as the Stabilization Force is known, comprises about 7,000 soldiers primarily drawn from North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries, including the U.S., France, Britain, Poland and Germany.

[jwalsh07]

You mean to tell me that we got Hussein and his sons before we got Mladic and Karadzic? Well, I'll be danged.