Karadzic snared by spy tip and political will

LONDON (Reuters) - NATO forces sought him for years, swooping on potential hideouts in helicopters and armored vehicles, but Radovan Karadzic turned up under the very nose of the Serbian authorities in a bland Belgrade suburb.

Serbian government sources said the indicted war crimes suspect, arrested on Monday evening, had been under surveillance in Serbia for several weeks after a tip-off from a foreign intelligence service.

But the timing of his arrest, just two weeks after a new, pro-Western Serbian government took office, suggests the decisive factor behind his capture was political resolve.

"At the end of the day this was going to be a problem that the Serbs solved themselves," said Nigel Inkster, a former senior official with Britain's MI6 foreign intelligence service who now works for the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

"Ultimately it did boil down to political will."

How close did Western intelligence come over the years to pinpointing the whereabouts of Karadzic?

"At intervals they might have had a good idea but clearly he kept on the move," Inkster said.

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For well over a decade, the hunt for the fugitive wartime Bosnian Serb leader, wanted for genocide and war crimes, was marked by short bursts of military activity followed by long lulls.

NATO and European Union soldiers conducted dozens of raids -- the last as recently as March -- on the homes of Karadzic's wife and children in Pale, his wartime stronghold southeast of Sarajevo. They even searched the sewage tank, his wife Ljiljana said, perhaps expecting to find him hiding in the ground like former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

In April 2004, dozens of U.S., British, German and Slovenian troops in helicopters and vehicles descended on Pale at night and raided a Serbian Orthodox church and the home of a priest, wounding him and his son. But there was no trace of Karadzic.

A 1999 book said the U.S. and French presidents, Bill Clinton and Jacques Chirac, had planned a joint commando raid to snatch Karadzic and were prepared to run the risk he would be killed in the operation. It never took place.

Karadzic was living in Belgrade when he was eventually arrested, heavily disguised with long white hair and a beard, and posing as a practitioner of alternative medicine.

"He happily, freely walked around the city," Serbia's war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told reporters.

Inkster said that if Serbia's government could track down and arrest Karadzic, it should be able to find his army commander Ratko Mladic, the other chief suspect sought by the war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

The capture of both men is a prerequisite for closer ties with the EU and eventual membership for Serbia.

"This was a man who until relatively recently was receiving his army pension. I think if the Serbs want to find Mladic, they can find Mladic," Inkster said.

(Editing by Tim Pearce)