Stockholm - Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt Thursday
rejected claims by former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic that
he had received an immunity deal from the United States.
Defence attorneys for Karadzic, who is facing a war crimes trial
in The Hague, have said 'via the media' that they wished to meet with
Bildt, he said.
Writing in his blog, Bildt said that he was willing to meet with
the attorneys, but rejected as 'slightly bizarre' claims that
Karadzic had been offered immunity in a secret deal with the United
States from prosecution stemming from war crimes atrocities.
The attorneys claim such a deal had been made in 1996 with then US
special envoy to the Balkans, Richard Holbrooke.
'With the quite substantial knowledge I have, this is a complete
hoax,' said Bildt, a former envoy for the European Union in the
Balkans.
A spokeswoman for Bildt told the German Press Agency dpa that no
date had been set for a meeting, and that the reports were not new.
Karadzic was arrested in Serbia in July 2008 and is on trial at
the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
in The Hague on charges of war crimes relating to the 1992 to 1995
war in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the break-up of Yugoslavia.
Holbrooke, who is now the US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan,
has always denied such a deal ever existed.
USA
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