SERBIAN WAR CRIMINAL RADOVAN KARADZIC'S SON ARRESTED IN BELGRADE

BELGRADE, Serbia (September 15,2007) - Serbian police have detained the son of Serbian war criminal Radovan Kardzic, his sister Sonja has said.Sasa Karadzic was taken into custody yesterday for questions on his father's whereabouts during a visit to Belgrade, where the family owns a flat, Sonja Jovicevic Karadzic said.

Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic,the political leader of the Serbians living in Bosnia during the 1992-1995 Serbian aggression against Bosnia, is wanted for genocide over the massacre of about 8,000 Bosnian civilians in 1995 in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebenica.

He has been on the run for the past ten years along with the former head of the genocidal Serbian aggressor's formation in Bosnia,Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladic.

"Special police arrested around six in the afternoon Sasa in Belgrade," his sister Sonja Karadzic said.

She said he had been visiting his five-year-old son who had undergone hip surgery at a Belgrade hospital.

A Serbian minister suggested on Friday that tactics could be changed to put more pressure on the Karadzic family.

The Serbian war criminal Karadzic's family has been the target of raids by NATO and EU peacekeepers on several occasions in the past few years, without visible results.

There was no immediate confirmation from the Serbian police and no other details were immediately available.

The reported detention comes amid renewed pledges by the Belgrade authorities to intensify search for the remaining Serbian war criminals sought by the Netherlands-based U.N. war crimes court for former Yugoslavia.

It also comes before a visit later this month of the chief prosecutor of the Hague court, Carla Del Ponte, whose report about Serbia's efforts to arrest the fugitives will be crucial for the Serbia's future EU integration.

Karadzic is thought to be hiding in the part of Bosnia now controlled by the Serbians living in Bosnia , or in a remote part of Montenegro.Police in neighbouring Montenegro often search houses belonging to Karadzic's relatives.

Meanwhile on Friday the UN security council extended the appointment of Carla del Ponte as prosecutor of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia until December 31, when her still-unnamed successor will take over.

The outspoken Del Ponte, from Switzerland, has held the job for eight years and her term of office had been due to end on Friday.

She has been appointed Swiss ambassador to Argentina starting next year.

As Yugoslavia prosecutor she has helped bring a number of Serbian war criminals to court, including Slobodan Milosevic,the former Serbian fascist president.