THE HAGUE, Netherlands - A Bosnian Croat general charged with ordering massacres of hundreds of Muslims surrendered to U.N. war crimes prosecutors yesterday evening.

Tihomir Blaskic flew from Zagreb, Croatia, to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport and turned himself in to Dutch authorities, said Christian Chartier, spokesman for the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

Blaskic was indicted in November for allegedly ordering massacres in central Bosnia's Lasva Valley in 1992-1993. Most notorious of the alleged atrocities was the destruction of the village of Ahmici, where Bosnian Croat forces massacred 120 Muslims in April 1993.

His lawyer, Zvonimir Hodak, said the former Bosnian Croat army chief of staff had turned himself in so he could prove his innocence.

''Blaskic was always a professional soldier who insisted on respecting all the international human rights conventions and was ordering his troops to behave according to all the principles of humanity,'' Hodak told the Associated Press.

He said the tribunal had no ''concrete proof'' of Blaskic's alleged actions, while witnesses and video pictures would prove his client's innocence. In the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Pale, meanwhile, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic pardoned another Bosnian Croat officer who was sentenced to death for slaughtering Serbs, sources close to the leadership said.

The sources gave no explanation for Karadzic's decision to pardon Ivan Stjepanovic, 26, whom a Serb military court last week found guilty of participating in the killing of 83 Serbs.

Stjepanovic has not been indicted by the international war crimes tribunal but is expected to be handed over for possible prosecution. In addition to Stjepanovic, eighteen Muslim prisoners who are being screened for war crimes by local Serb authorities might also be extradited, the sources said.