By
The Associated Press
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina - A Bosnian Serb leader has flown to The Hague, home of the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, under suspicion of genocide and crimes against humanity, an ally was quoted as saying yesterday.
Biljana Plavsic left for the Netherlands in a Bosnian Serb government plane, political ally Svetozar Mihajlovic told the Beta news agency. Both the tribunal and international officials in Bosnia have refused to comment on reports that Plavsic has been indicted for war crimes.
Mihajlovic revealed no details beyond saying that Plavsic is "under suspicion of genocide and crimes against humanity."
"We will have more information about the case tomorrow," Mihajlovic told Beta, the independent Belgrade-based news agency. She added that a Serb lawyer in The Hague has been engaged on Plavsic's behalf.
Mihajlovic could not be reached for comment by The Associated Press, and there was no confirmation that Plavsic had arrived at The Hague. Some local media suggested Plavsic may have been summoned as a witness against other former Bosnian Serb leaders.
Plavsic, a 70-year-old biologist, is among Bosnian Serb wartime leaders known or thought to be indicted for war crimes.
She sided with the Bosnian Serb nationalists when Serbs in Bosnia rebelled against the country's independence declaration from Yugoslavia in 1992, triggering more than three years of war.
Throughout the 1992-1995 conflict, during which Bosnian Serb forces kept the capital, Sarajevo, under siege and killed and expelled tens of thousands of Muslims and Croats, Plavsic held a top leadership position and was known for her nationalist statements.
Plavsic served as a key aide to Radovan Karadzic, Bosnia's No. 1 war crimes suspect. After the war, she took over from Karadzic and led the Bosnian Serb republic from 1996-1998.
In the years after the conflict ended, Plavsic split from the Bosnian Serb hard-liners, turning to the West and establishing close ties with international officials in Bosnia. She lost a presidential election in 1998 but retained the leading position in her party, based in the northern town of Banja Luka.
"Plavsic's responsibility is evident ... and her split from Karadzic and Karadzic and (military commander Ratko) Mladic cannot minimize her responsibility for the period when she was in the leadership," said Amor Masovic, the head of the Muslim Commission for Missing Persons. "Plavsic was one of the key people that took part in the aggression."
In 1995, the war crimes tribunal issued a warrant for Plavsic on suspicion that she was involved in genocide. She was detained at Vienna airport in 1998 but freed after police consulted with judges at the tribunal and decided not to act on the warrant.
