Bosnian Serbs target Karadzic

Karadzic is accused of genocide against Bosnian Muslims in Srebenica

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- The Bosnian Serb prime minister has said the adoption of a new law may clear the way for the arrest of war crimes suspects Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

The legislation calls for cooperation with the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal.

Bosnia's Serb republic has been under mounting pressure to work with The Hague after Serbia's handover of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who appeared at the court on Tuesday to face charges of crimes against humanity.

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Mladen Ivanic said he expected the new law to pass throught parliament within three weeks, but he insisted that such cooperation must be a two-way street.

Serbs have also demanded indictment of Muslims and Croats committed during the 1992-95 war.

"If we accept the rules of this law, there will be a decision of the supreme court and I think that practically there is no alternative but to do the job," he said.

"That means to arrest the people."

Ivanic said he did not know the whereabouts of wartime leader Karadzic nor his military chief Mladic, whom the United Nations believes are in the Serb republic, and insisted he was not in contact with them.

The U.N. says the Serb republic is the last part of the former Yugoslavia failing to cooperate with the Hague tribunal, and must start doing so at once.

Ivanic, at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, said he expected the law to pass parliament in the next three weeks. Karadzic and Mladic -- now the tribunal's most wanted suspects -- have been evading justice since the end of the Bosnian war in 1995.

The fugitives are accused of genocide against Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica -- the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II.

"Republika Srpska became a safe haven for fugitives and is now the last safe haven for fugitives in all former Yugoslavia," Florence Hartmann, spokeswoman for chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, told Reuters.

Ivanic will meet Del Ponte at the tribunal on Thursday, Hartmann said.

"It's a meeting about cooperation. We will remind them of their obligation to cooperate with the tribunal and the importance of starting immediately," she said.

Ivanic said he last saw Mladic in 1994 and Karadzic in 1996.

Efforts to find them would now intensify, he added. "There was not such strong activity in that direction ... there will be a little bit more now."

Ivanic said Serbia's decision to surrender Milosevic and to fully cooperate with the tribunal will prompt fugitives in the Yugoslav republic to hide out in the Serb-run area of Bosnia.

"Some of them will come to Republika Srpska" he told reporters, the Associated Press reported.

Del Ponte last week called it "scandalous" Karadzic and Mladic had not been arrested, implicitly criticising the 20,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia for its failure to seize more suspects.