Military

U.S. Welcomes Wife's Call to Radovan Karadzic To Surrender

29 July 2005

Urges politicians in region "to support and echo this call to surrender"

The United States welcomes and echoes the statements of Mrs. Ljiljana Karadzic calling on her husband, Radovan Karadzic, to surrender to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, says State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

Karadzic was indicted by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague for his alleged role in the genocidal bloodletting in the 1990s in Bosnia and Herzegovina. U.S. officials have said repeatedly that there is “no possibility of a normal relationship” between the United States and either Bosnia and Herzegovina or Serbia and Montenegro while such major architects of the bloodshed as Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are still at large. (See, for example, this recent statement by Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns.)

Following is the text of the statement:

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U.S. Department of State
Office of the Spokesman

July 29, 2005

Statement by Sean Mccormack, Spokesman

LJILJANA KARADZIC'S CALL FOR RADOVAN KARADZIC TO SURRENDER

We welcome and echo the statements of Mrs. Ljiljana Karadzic calling on her husband, Radovan Karadzic, to surrender to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. We admire Mrs. Karadzic's courage to call for what is right and what is needed for both the Karadzic family and all the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro, and throughout the entire Balkans region.

We urge politicians in the region to support and echo this call to surrender. We urge Radovan Karadzic to heed these calls and surrender. We also call upon Ratko Mladic and Ante Gotovina to do the same.

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(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)