US posts reward for Bosnian leaders

Karadzic and Mladic are thought to be in hiding

The US State Department has distributed fresh "wanted" posters in Bosnia's capital, Sarajevo, of the former Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.

Both men have been indicted for genocide by the UN war crimes tribunal in connection with the Bosnian War in the early 1990s.

More populist images of the men are found on these calendars

The posters advertise a reward of up to $5m for information, and give potential informants both a mobile phone number and an e-mail address.

Similar posters have appeared in Sarajevo before, but the distribution of these coincides with media speculation in Bosnia that American units have been deployed to find the two fugitives.

The posters were printed by the US State Department's Rewards for Justice programme, which was established under a 1984 act to combat international terrorism, according to the US embassy in Sarajevo.

Belgrade's rumour mill

There were rumours earlier this week in Belgrade that US forces had actually found the suspects, but these later turned out to be unfounded.

The BBC's correspondent in the capital of former Yugoslavia, Paul Anderson, says the two wanted men are believed to be well protected or well hidden.

Our correspondent says Mr Karadzic is believed to have moved around in Bosnia's Serb entity, Republika Srpska, and is now thought by many to be in hiding somewhere in the remote and snow-covered mountains in the east.

Mr Mladic is probably in or near Belgrade and is possibly being protected discreetly by the Yugoslav Army, according to Stefan Niksic, editor of the respected Nin news magazine.

"The Yugoslav authorities should know something about that, although they are denying [it] all the time. He was definitely seen several times in Belgrade and... there is nowhere else for him to go," said Mr Niksic.