NATO arrests Bosnian Serb officer

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia -- NATO-led peacekeepers have arrested a Bosnian Serb army colonel who commanded a corps operating during the Bosnian war.

Bosnian Serb Deputy Interior Minister Zeljko Janjetovic told Reuters: "The Serb Republic's Colonel Vidoje Blagojevic was arrested this morning in the Banja Luka public security area zone."

The Bosnian Serb army headquarters confirmed the arrest and told the news agency British troops serving with the 20,000-strong SFOR force carried out the arrest. SFOR declined to comment.

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Blagojevic was the head of the engineering section of the Bosnian Serb army's Drina corps, which operated in eastern Bosnia and was also involved in military actions in the former U.N. safe zone of Srebrenica.

He has not been publicly indicted but is believed to have been charged under a sealed indictment from the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague relating to crimes committed in Srebrenica, where up to 8,000 Muslim men vanished after it fell to Serbs in July 1995.

A former Bosnian Serb general was found guilty last week of genocide for his role in the massacre in Srebrenica.

The U.N. war crimes tribunal sentenced Radislav Krstic to 46 years after finding him guilty on eight counts -- two of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and one of violations of the laws or customs of war.

The landmark judgment was the first time the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia found a defendant guilty of genocide.

The ruling meant the massacre has been recognised as the first genocide in Europe since the persecution of Jews during World War II.