Radovan Karadzic’s defense team has announced that it is withdrawing its formal witness request for Richard Holbrooke who has died yesterday.

A lawyer for Radovan Karadzic says the former Bosnian Serb leader has expressed “sadness and regret” at the death of veteran U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke.

Robinson told U.N. judges at Karadzic’s trial on Tuesday that he had been hoping to call Holbrooke to testify as a witness in the long running case.

Karadzic says Holbrooke promised him immunity from prosecution in 1996 in exchange for dropping out of public life.

Holbrooke denied ever having cut such a deal and judges rejected the claim.

Judges also said that even if such deal existed it would not be binding on the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal.

Karadzic was arrested after a month-long tracking operation, WikiLeaks has uncovered.

“Vukcevic [Serbia's war crimes prosecutor] told us that the arrest had come after a month of tracking Karadzic’s support network and that only three people in the country had known about the operation in advance,” reads the diplomatic cable sent from the US Embassy in Belgrade that was classified as “secret”.

The cable also reveals that Serbia’s secret service chief, Rade Bulatovic, presented information on Karadzic “in exchange for the promise of an ambassadorship”.

The cable says that the rumor had it that Bulatovic was to be made an Ambassador of Syria. Serbia’s current Ambassador to Syria is Jovan Vujasinovic.

December 14, 2010
SERBIANNA

• A Permanent Economic Emergency