Karadzic refuses to enter pleas on charges

BRUSSELS, March 3 -- Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic refused to enter pleas on the genocide and war crimes charges against him at a hearing at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague on Tuesday.

Karadzic was asked to enter pleas in response to 11 charges allegedly stemming from the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in a revised indictment filed against him. With his refusal, presiding judge Iain Bonomy ordered the court record Karadzic pleas of "not guilty."

Karadzic, 63, who represented himself at Tuesday's hearing, said he refused to enter pleas because he had an agreement with former U.S. assistant secretary of state Richard Holbrooke who promised him immunity from prosecution by the court on behalf of the U.S. government, in return for his withdrawal from public life.

Holbrooke was the chief broker of the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995.

"I have a general position in relation to this entire indictment ... I'm challenging it on the basis of my agreement with the international community whose representative at that time was Mr. Richard Holbrooke," Karadzic said at the hearing, which was broadcast live on the ICTY website.

When Bonomy asked him whether he wanted to plead guilty or not guilty on the first charge of genocide, he said: "I'm not going to answer it at all for the reasons that I have mentioned. This tribunal does not have the right to try me." He said he had the same opinion on all the other charges.

Bonomy said the issue that Karadzic raised would be dealt with "in due course." Karadzic has made submissions regarding the issue to the appeals chamber.

The latest version of the indictment, filed on Feb. 27, charges Karadzic with 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, including persecution, extermination, and deportation during the Bosnian war.

A notable difference is that the new indictment contains two separate counts of genocide, one pertaining to acts committed in various Bosnian municipalities, and a second covering the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995.

Karadzic was arrested in July last year in Serbia after 13 years on the run. He was transferred to the ICTY the same month.

The Serbian government was under enormous pressure from the European Union to arrest and transfer Karadzic to the court. Brussels has refused to start serious accession talks with Belgrade until the latter "fully cooperates with the ICTY".