RICHARD HOLBROOK DENIES MAKING A DEAL WITH SERBIAN WAR CRIMINAL RADOVAN KARADZIC

WASHINGTON,USA (September 23,2007) - Former U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrook has denied he struck a deal with Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadžić.

Holbrook, one of the authors of the Dayton peace accord that ended the 1992-1995 Serbian,Montenegrin and Croatian aggressions against Bosnia, told Bosnian daily Dnevni Avaz yesterday that recent claims about an immunity deal the U.S. granted the former political leader of the Serbians living in Bosnia, Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadžić, were "disgusting lies."

Former Hague Tribunal prosecution spokeswoman, Florence Hartmann, said in a recently published book that Washington protected Serbian war criminal Karadžić,wanted by a U.N. war crimes tribunal for charges including genocide,allowing him impunity in exchange for his withdrawal from public life.

"It is amazing that there are still people in this world who trust the word of a war criminal over that of the United States and the people who brought peace to the Balkans," Holbrook told the newspaper.

"I have been hearing these claims for the past ten years. I will no longer pay any attention to them and I will not react," Bosnian daily quoted the diplomat.

Meantime, Hartmann, the author of “Peace and Punishment: The Secret Hague Wars Between International Law and International Politics”, told a Slovenian daily Delo that the world powers could have, but did not prevent the genocide that the genocidal Serbian formations committed against hundreds of thousands of Bosnians, during the 1992-1995 Serbian aggression against Bosnia.

Hartmann's book has already stirred controversy with its claim that the world powers went on to obstruct the arrest of Serbian war criminals responsible for genocide in Bosnia.