NATO, EU troops raid home of Karadzic ally

PALE, Bosnia, February 10 (Reuters) NATO launched a dawn raid on a house of a Bosnian Serb suspected of helping top war crimes fugitive Radovan Karadzic and seized some material for further investigation, its spokesman in Bosnia said today.

US troops, backed by European Union peacekeepers, sealed off parts of Karadzic's wartime stronghold of Pale, east of Sarajevo, and searched the home of his wartime commander Radomir Kojic, Derek Chappel said.

''We have made a seizure of items that we consider to be of interest. We took away four to five boxes of stuff from the house,'' Chappel said after the operation was completed. He declined to give further details on what was taken.

He said the search was conducted to try to find additional information about Radovan Karadzic's support network and in an effort to determine his location.

Chappel said that six occupants of the house did not resist.

''Everything went smoothly,'' he added.

The local police provided some limited support. The United Nations war crimes tribunal's investigators were also informed, he said.

The European Union has banned entry to Kojic and other alleged supporters of Karadzic and their Bosnian assets have been frozen.

Men believed to be Karadzic's helpers have been detained in the past by NATO and EUFOR but there has never been any indication that Karadzic himself had narrowly eluded arrest.

Bosnian Serb wartime leader Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic have been indicted for genocide by the Hague-based war crimes court for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 Muslims and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo.

They remain at large 10 years after being indicted. Mladic is believed to be hiding in Serbia while Karadzic's whereabouts are disputed.

Bosnian media, citing an intelligence source, reported earlier this moth that Karadzic was hiding in Russia but Russian authorities denied the allegation.

UN Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte, who is leaving her job in September, has urged the European Union not to build closer ties with Serbia until it hands over Mladic and Karadzic.

REUTERS AB BD1801