"There are some indications that Karadzic has certain health problems and that it something that he should take care of," US General Virgil Packett said in an interview with the independent Nezavisne Novine daily.

"Karadzic is not getting any younger, he is nearing an end," Packett said, responding to a question on whether he believed that the fugitive's alleged health problems could lead him to appear before the UN court in The Hague.

"I think it makes sense if he (Karadzic) is also thinking in a way to spend the last years of his life knowing he did the right thing for this country," said Packett, in comments translated into Bosnian.

The 59-year-old Karadzic is wanted by the UN court for alleged war crimes and genocide committed during Bosnia's 1992-95 war. His charges include notably the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim males in Srebrenica and the siege of Sarajevo.

The Bosnian Serb wartime leader is said to be hiding in Bosnia's Serb-run part, where he enjoys support of the local population, or in neighbouring Montenegro.

In January, following a tip-off that Karadzic may be in need of medical attention, NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) sealed his wartime stronghold of Pale, near Sarajevo, and searched medical facilities there.

But like a series of other operations to track him down conducted by SFOR over the past few years, the one in January also ended in failure.

Packett emphasized that SFOR will do "everything within our power and mandate that Karadzic be arrested or surrenders," by the end of the year when NATO-led peacekeepers are to be replaced by an EU force.

The NATO-led multinational peacekeepers were deployed in Bosnia in December 1995, after a US-brokered peace deal that ended the country's bloody war which claimed some 200,000 lives.

NATO leaders decided last month to wind up the alliance's peackeeping mission in Bosnia at the end of the year and hand it over to the European Union.

WAR.WIRE