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ANNOUNCER: Tonight on FRONTLINE/World, two Stories from a Small Planet.

In Israel-

NEWSCASTER: The Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has been rushed to hospital-

ANNOUNCER: On election night, an intimate look at Sharon's successor, Ehud Olmert.

EHUD OLMERT, Acting Prime Minister, Israel: I want to lead. I want to change. And I'm going to do it.

ANNOUNCER: And how did this man's family influence his decision to withdraw from the West Bank?

EHUD OLMERT: L'chaim!

ANNOUNCER: And in Bosnia, a country still haunted by the ghosts of war, the man who started it all, Slobodan Milosevic, died in his jail cell this month and was buried in Serbia. But the two men who carried out Milosevic's plans for ethnic cleansing are still at large.

CARLA DEL PONTE, Chief Prosecutor, The Hague: It is a factual, recognized genocide, and Mladic is one of the most responsible for this genocide.

ANNOUNCER: Ten years after the slaughter in Bosnia, why haven't these men been caught?

Israel: The Unexpected Candidate

Reported by: OFRA BIKEL

OFRA BIKEL, Reporter: [voice-over] It was a cool, calm evening in Jerusalem, at least on the surface. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was at his ranch outside the city, scheduled for heart surgery the next morning. Then, at around 10:00 PM, the calm was broken as Israeli television went on the air, announcing that Sharon was being rushed in an ambulance to Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem.

ISRAEL MAIMON, Cabinet Secretary: I was at the hospital at about five minutes to 11:00, when they took the prime minister off the ambulance. And I saw his condition and I knew he's not able to function as a prime minister.

OFRA BIKEL: In a restaurant in Jerusalem, Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was having dinner with his wife, Aliza.

ALIZA OLMERT, Acting Prime Minister's Wife: It happened so rapidly. We were just, you know, having dinner with friends at a Moroccan restaurant in the center of Jerusalem when the security man called him out for an emergency telephone call. And then he comes back, and we could- I could see by his face that something very dramatic has happened.

EHUD OLMERT: The secretary came in and told me that Ari has been in bad shape and he is on his way to the hospital. I returned back to the table. I didn't say anything, I just kept talking with people. But of course, my mind was somewhere else. About 30 minutes later, I felt that I need to go home, that this was the best place to be.

OFRA BIKEL: Back at the hospital, Sharon, who had been diagnosed with a massive stroke, was to go under anesthesia for an emergency surgery. The transfer of authority had to be made.

ISRAEL MAIMON: [press conference, subtitles] Good evening, everyone. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fell ill at his ranch-

EHUD OLMERT: At 11:15, I think it was, I got a telephone call from the secretary of the cabinet, and he told me,"Mr. Olmert, I have the attorney general on the line, and this call is taped." And of course, that was the sign that this is official and formal and this is a constitutional act. And he said that the authorities of prime minister are bestowed upon me immediately.

OFRA BIKEL: [on camera] What did you feel?

EHUD OLMERT: I felt I want to be minister of finance at that moment. That's what I felt. I felt that- you know, I hoped that I'll wake up in the morning and I'll be the minister of finance, and that will be it.

OFRA BIKEL: [voice-over] Half of the camera crews rushed to the Olmerts' house.

ALIZA OLMERT: When we came home, we realized that the house turned into a fortress, surrounded by tens of security people, by security measures - electronic security measures were taken all over it - surrounded by media, by curious people. And I was watching the house and I said, "Bye-bye, freedom."

OFRA BIKEL: ALIZA OLMERT is a good friend, and a few weeks later, I had come to Israel to see how she was handling her new situation. Sharon was still in a coma, and her husband, Ehud, would now be the one facing an election.

EHUD OLMERT: In a way, I'm an incumbent and I'm campaigning, and I'm chairman of the party and I'm number one, and I'm the candidate for prime minister. It's true. But he is still a person who breathes, who is really the prime minister. And in a certain, you know, maybe childish way, there is still hope that suddenly one day, he will open his eyes and say, "Hey Olmert, where are you," you know?

OFRA BIKEL: [on camera] "Give it back."

EHUD OLMERT: "I want to take over again." And I'll come to him say, "Hey, take it."

OFRA BIKEL: Ehud might be the prime minister. How do you feel about that?

ALIZA OLMERT: Well, I wish him- you know, I wish he will win, get what he wants, what he always wanted.

OFRA BIKEL: And for you?

ALIZA OLMERT: No. If it was for me, I would- you know, I would- I would give it up. It's not- it's been imposed on me, in many ways. I mean, it's not my choice,

OFRA BIKEL: Is it any fun?

ALIZA OLMERT: No, it's not fun at all. No.

OFRA BIKEL: None of it.

ALIZA OLMERT: None of it. It's a new ballgame.

OFRA BIKEL: [voice-over] It was a whole new ballgame for everyone. In the four months since I last visited Israel, the whole political map had radically changed. Seventeen hundred families of Jewish settlers were evacuated from their homes in Gaza by Prime Minister Sharon's government. Amazingly, for all of the tears and prayers and protests, the evacuation was non-violent. No one was hurt. The earth didn't move. But a huge myth was shattered. Jewish settlements could indeed be dismantled in Israel with little public resistance.

SHIMON SHIFFER, Journalist, Yediot Achronot: Almost every Israeli, leftist or rightist, has a dream that one day the Palestinians will disappear. But now, most of the Israelis came to the conclusion that the Palestinians, they are not going to disappear. They are going to be here, and they're going to stay forever. And it's- now it's up to us to ask ourselves, "OK, so what we are going to do with this reality?" And the answer of most of the Israelis is that we have to give up the dream of having all the territories, all the whole- what we call Eretz Israel, and we have to live in more modest borders, permanent borders, and to let the other side to the Palestinians to live their lives.

Prof. GADI WOLFSFELD, Political Science, Hebrew Univ.: The first ramification is the fact- more than anything else has to do with the way Israelis are relating to the conflict. They're basically saying the solutions of the left didn't work, negotiations didn't work. The solutions of the right didn't work, meaning trying to dictate a solution through the use of force. And now there's this third way, which is talking about unilateral withdrawal, which of course, has already taken place in Gaza and there's every reason to believe will continue to take place in the coming years on the West Bank.

OFRA BIKEL: Although the public supported Sharon, the right wing of his party didn't. Sharon left the Likud, and Olmert, whose standing in the party was very low at that point, went with him. On November 20th, Sharon announced the foundation of a new party, Kadima. Almost immediately, Kadima became a new political force, centered around Sharon. Forty-five days later, Sharon was in an irreversible coma.

NEWSCASTER: Ariel Sharon, 77 years old, has suffered what his doctors are now describing-

OFRA BIKEL: The next morning, sitting next to an empty chair, a haggard EHUD OLMERT, minister of finance and deputy prime minister, chaired the government meeting. By the time I came to Jerusalem, the polls showed that Kadima was gaining votes in the upcoming elections and that EHUD OLMERT looked very much like the future prime minister.

SHIMON SHIFFER: If I have to look back at the chances of EHUD OLMERT five months ago, if you would ask me about his chances to become our next prime minister, I would tell you, "You are joking, Ofra," and I would say it's almost zero.

OFRA BIKEL: EHUD OLMERT was a product of a small community, Nahalat Jabotinski, named after a famous militant nationalist leader. Less than 30 families were settled here in the '40s. The small community clung together, separate and ostracized by the majority of the Jewish community at the time because of their underground militancy and what was considered ultra- nationalism. Ehud grew up with his three brothers, aggressive and competitive. His father became a member of parliament, representing the right-wing party Herut. It wasn't long before young Ehud was off and running in the same direction. From law school, he ran for the Knesset, then became a minister without portfolio and a minister of health. Then in 1993, he ran and was elected mayor of Jerusalem, where he took on a much higher profile.

ALIZA OLMERT: This was actually our most difficult time as a couple, when Ehud was a mayor, because it's not only thinking differently, but he was a doer. He was actually, you know, creating realities that I disagreed with. So this was really, you know, our worst time as a couple.

OFRA BIKEL: ALIZA OLMERT always had her own life. A mother of four, she was a talented artist. She was a playwright, a photographer and a painter. As a social worker, she worked with neglected children. As an artist, she turned fragile objects into art. Her works have been exhibited all over the world. She and her husband never agreed politically. He belongs to the right wing, she to the left.

ALIZA OLMERT: We have disagreed politically from the very beginning, and we agreed to disagree. I mean, it was known from the very beginning. We come from very different backgrounds.

OFRA BIKEL: Her parents were Holocaust survivors who came to Israel with her in 1949.

ALIZA OLMERT: All they needed and all they wanted was just, you know, a place to put their feet on. It was kind of a refuge, a kind of a new place to escape to and to start a new life with the privilege of not being a minority anymore, of belonging somewhere. I cannot recall in my childhood any talks about the wholeness of Jerusalem or longing for the tombs of our ancestors in the West Bank. It's a different mentality. It's a different approach. It's a different basic assumption about this place.

OFRA BIKEL: Once she became the wife of the mayor of Jerusalem, she heard more about the holy places from her husband than she ever thought she would.

ALIZA OLMERT: Just listen to the speeches he was giving over the years he was mayor of Jerusalem. They were nationalistic, with a very strong claim over ownership on Jerusalem. I couldn't cope with this rhetoric.

OFRA BIKEL: He talked about the eternal unity of Jewish Jerusalem and the importance of the holy places for the Jews now and forever.

ALIZA OLMERT: He affiliated with the more extreme nationalistic segments at the time. He was supporting the settlers in East Jerusalem and in the Silwan village, which I completely disagreed with.

OFRA BIKEL: Many in the country disagreed bitterly with his policies. Two of the Olmerts' good friends were Joshua Sobol, a leading Israeli playwright, and his wife, Edna, a stage designer.

EDNA SOBOL, Stage Designer: We had a lot of arguments during the years, and there were points in which- as long as it was ideas, we could have the arguments. He was on the right, we were on the left, and we argued. But once it became deeds, then it was difficult for us.

OFRA BIKEL: One of those deeds was the opening of the tunnel in the old city of Jerusalem in 1996. Dug by archaeologists and almost unused, it was 1,500 feet long, going from the Western Wall under the Muslim quarter to the Via Dolorosa, where it was sealed off. The then-prime minister, Netanyahu, and the mayor of Jerusalem, Olmert, decided to dig out the opening for tourists to pass through. In the charged atmosphere of Jerusalem, this was a risky thing to do.

JOSHUA SOBOL, Playwright: We were all spending an evening at Tommy Lapid's place in Tel Aviv, and at a certain point, EHUD OLMERT announced the opening of the tunnel. He said, "I have to go back to Jerusalem because tonight we are opening the tunnel."

TOMMY LAPID, Fmr. Deputy Prime Minister: At 11:00 PM, Ehud said, "I have to leave earlier than usual because I have to be there when we open the tunnel in the old city."

JOSHUA SOBOL: There a kind of dead silence for a moment, and then Tommy Lapid - I think he was the first one to say, "Ehud, this is a bad mistake."

TOMMY LAPID: And I said to him, "You shouldn't do this. There will be terrible upheaval." And he said, "I checked it with the security services, and they said that there will be no real trouble."

ALIZA OLMERT: I could see the consequences. I completely disagreed with it.

OFRA BIKEL: And in fact, Arabs, who felt that the act was desecrating holy Muslim sites, started throwing stones. And then there were shots. And within three days, 80 people were dead, 69 Palestinians and 11 Israeli soldiers.

EDNA SOBOL: Then it was very difficult for us to continue to relate to him. And I remember writing to him a fax. And I think he was very angry with us also.

ALIZA OLMERT: Yes, some of our friends turned their backs to us at the time, and it took, like, 10 years to reconcile, yeah.

OFRA BIKEL: [on camera] How come?

ALIZA OLMERT: Well, it so happens that some of our friends, you know, stick to the same- to the same ideas that I do, and they just couldn't cope with the right policies of Ehud at the time.

OFRA BIKEL: [voice-over] And for a long time, their children couldn't, either. Today, when the Olmert family meets for Friday dinner, there are about 15 of them, including children and grandchildren. Shaul is the third child and first son.

SHAUL OLMERT, EHUD OLMERT's son: It's sort of common knowledge, I bet you, that if you'll ask people on the street about the Olmert family, a lot of them will know that there wasn't always full agreement about political stands. And I know that a lot of people were very curious about those differences. It became a very well-known fact in Israel that in the Olmerts' residence, practically everyone besides my father is a left-winger.

OFRA BIKEL: Dana, an editor studying for her Ph.D., and her partner, Duffy are both deeply involved in left-wing politics. Michal, an organizational psychologist and mother of two, is moderate but still far away from the right-wing politics her father represented as mayor of Jerusalem. So is their youngest son, Ariel, who is now studying abroad. Shaul has his own history.

SHAUL OLMERT: Soon after my release from the army, I became politically active in a number of left-wing organizations. And at some point, I signed a petition which called for IDF reserve soldiers not to agree to serve in the Occupied Territories, assuming that our presence in those territories was not legitimate. And this started- I was pretty naive, I guess, signing this petition, because I thought I'd be another name on the petition. I didn't mean to make a public stand. I'm not embarrassed of my views, but I had no need and no desire to become the focus of public attention. Unfortunately, some other people who saw my name on this list thought otherwise, and it became- it received a lot of attention on the Israeli media. My father wasn't angry. First of all, it wasn't a surprise to him. I mean, he knew what my stands are and he definitely disagreed with those stands, and it was something we've always discussed. We were always quite open about- in general, our political debates, internally were always pretty open and pretty free-form. [www.pbs.org: Read the family interviews]

EHUD OLMERT: What's the big deal? They're entitled to have their opinions. They're entitled to have their different opinions. We really live in a very open environment in the family, where everyone is entitled to have his own position. That's fine with us.

ALIZA OLMERT: You can't send your kids to progressive liberal schools in which they are encouraged to think for themselves and then tell them- when they kind of position themselves, or you know, structure their political view, you can't tell them they are wrong and they have to obey their father's attitudes.

EHUD OLMERT: I always admired the tolerance of my family- you know, that they tolerated my dissension for the family consensus.

OFRA BIKEL: [on camera] Which is?

EHUD OLMERT: My dissension, which was somewhat to the right in comparison to them, and they never got rid of me, in spite of my different positions, which shows a degree of tolerance.

OFRA BIKEL: Did they ever vote for you?

EHUD OLMERT: That you have to ask them.

SHAUL OLMERT: When it came to the elections for parliaments, in most of the cases, we disagreed about political views, and as a result, most of us voted for different parties.

ALIZA OLMERT: Well, I'm going to vote for him now. But it was perfectly OK with him when I didn't vote for him.

EHUD OLMERT: I never questioned their right to be wrong.

OFRA BIKEL: Is he basically a tolerant man?

ALIZA OLMERT: Ehud? Ehud is very tolerant man, very acceptive of differences. Otherwise, he couldn't have lived with me.

EHUD OLMERT: You know, what do you expect me to say,"I'm tolerant," you know, "I'm a liberal, I'm tolerant"? No, I just say that they are tolerant because they tolerated me. I was a minority, not they.

OFRA BIKEL: And now?

EHUD OLMERT: Now? Maybe I'm now in the- I now reflect the consensus of the family.

OFRA BIKEL: [voice-over] If this is true, then he has changed-

Prof. GADI WOLFSFELD: Well, it's an interesting issue. I mean, he, to a certain extent, went through the same kinds of transitions that many Israelis did, perhaps more radical because Olmert was one of the most right-wing Likudniks. People may not remember that he voted- he was one of the few that voted against the agreement with Sadat, the agreement with Egypt to pull out of Sinai in exchange for peace. I mean, there are very few people that are right-wing enough to do that.

TOMMY LAPID: I was, of course, a witness to what happened to Olmert. We are now very close friends for 30 years, the two families. And I was more to the left than he was, and I was always pulling him. And he didn't admit that he is changing his position, but he did.

EDNA SOBOL: I think there was a real change, yes, because I think he did quite a courageous act with the hinatkut, disengagement. Yeah, he was courageous to come out with it the first, even before Sharon, and I think that it was not opportunistic. I don't believe it was.

Prof. GADI WOLFSFELD: One has to say, to his credit, that it took a lot of guts to announce, when he was still in Likud, when he didn't know that for sure at all that Sharon was going to form a new party, to take the stand- I mean, the first to come out officially not only for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza, but in fact, for significant parts of the West Bank. He knew it was political suicide.

OFRA BIKEL: The event they were referring to had happened in 2003, at the Ben Gurion memorial service. Sharon was sick and asked Olmert to make a speech. A speech by a deputy prime minister was not deemed important enough to be broadcast, but it was, in fact, explosive and was reported as such in the press. Without Sharon's explicit approval, Olmert called for unilateral evacuation of the occupied territories.

EHUD OLMERT: I have reached a conclusion that when we have to make a choice between greater Israel or a Jewish democratic state - and we have to make this choice, it is inevitable - then my choice is a Jewish democratic country. And that means that we will never be able to keep all of the territories, that we have to compromise on land.

OFRA BIKEL: But it's on the question of land that, as prime minister, he will face his two biggest problems.

SHIMON SHIFFER: EHUD OLMERT is going to face a Jewish Hamas and a Palestinian Hamas. He's going to face, as the prime minister, a Jewish Hamas, and I mean settlers, very religious, very extremist, that they are getting the orders only from one side, from God. And on the other side, he will have to face the Palestinian Hamas. They are also getting their orders only from God. And when you have such a situation, it's a very complicated situation to cope with as a prime minister, and he'll have to be very, very clever. And it's going to be his real test as a prime minister.

OFRA BIKEL: His first test came a few weeks ago in Amona, a tiny illegal outpost in the West Bank.

EHUD OLMERT: Amona was an unauthorized outpost. The government of Israel for the last few years made a very explicit commitment to the American administration, to the international community and to the courts in Israel, that we will dismantle this unauthorized outposts because by nature, by definition, they are unauthorized, they are illegal.

OFRA BIKEL: He threatened to use force, if necessary. The settlers, who had been stalling all along, made a last minute offer at midnight, but Olmert was adamant.

EHUD OLMERT: "I'm sorry, I don't accept that this is a bona fide offer, and I'm going ahead."

OFRA BIKEL: There were no more quiet protests, as police and settlers fought. It was violent and resulted in more than 200 wounded. Half were settlers, the other half policemen. Olmert's second challenge was the unexpected victory of Hamas in January 2006. Having participated for the first time in the elections for the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Hamas, Israel's sworn enemy, won a landslide victory, to the dismay of both the Americans and the Israelis. [www.pbs.org: Read dispatches from Gaza] What exactly the policy of the new government towards Hamas will be is not yet clear, but the talk is tough.

EHUD OLMERT: Hamas is a fundamentalist, extremist, terrorist organization whose whole nature is against everything that we believe in, that we can live with, that any of the Western civilizations can live with. So that presents the real difference, the real conflict between us and the Palestinians on the edge.

OFRA BIKEL: This election season. Hamas is the only subject everyone agrees on and warns about. Amir Peretz is the candidate of the left.

AMIR PERETZ: My red line is the green flag. Hamas- Hamas calls for the destruction of the Jewish state!

OFRA BIKEL: Benjamin Netanyahu, candidate of the right. He talks about Hamas as the movement of fanatic murderers. "We must understand them," he says, "and believe them. They are out to get us.". As for the rest, there are the usual chants and applause and hand waving, and daily polls accompanied by arguments about the disengagement, and stories about personal misdeeds. [www.pbs.org: Opinions from the Tel Aviv street] Olmert campaigns while fending off attacks. He still runs the various ministries he heads until the elections and tends to the government affairs. And at home, he now seems much more in tune with his family.

EHUD OLMERT: Yes, I have changed my opinions about some fundamental issues, and I'm proud of it. Life is changing. The realities are changing. The circumstances are changing. Things that were, are not anymore. Things that are, were never before.

OFRA BIKEL: He worries that without change, time is running out.

EHUD OLMERT: And I want to be in a position that I dictate the permanent solution, rather than react to something that comes from the outside. I want to lead. I want to change. I want to dictate it. And I'm going to do it.

ANNOUNCER: Next, in Bosnia, a search for the two most wanted men in Europe.

Brig. Gen. BILL WEBER, NATO: Takes one guy to hide a guy, if that. I mean, it's very difficult work.

Bosnia: The Men Who Got Away

Reported by JENNIFER GLASSE

JENNIFER GLASSE, Reporter: [voice-over] I'm flying over Bosnia, a country still haunted by memories of civil war. The capital, Sarajevo, is on the road to recovery, but bullet-riddled buildings still stand in the city center. It was just over 10 years ago when sniper fire echoed through these streets. Civilians, mostly Muslim, were fired upon by Bosnian Serbs from the hills above. The siege of Sarajevo lasted three years. The men responsible were the Bosnian Serb president, Radovan Karadzic, and his general, Ratko Mladic. These two men were the architects of the ethnic cleansing campaign that left 200,000 dead in Bosnia. Their most horrific crime took place after they captured the mountain town of Srebrenica. Many Muslims fled into the woods. General Mladic's army began systematically flushing them out.

SERB SOLDIER: [subtitles] Come on, guys, just get out and put your hands in the air! Come on! Hurry up! Faster!

JENNIFER GLASSE: What happened next was so shocking that many Serbs refused to believe it until this extraordinary underground video surfaced last year. Please be aware that the scenes that follow are extremely graphic. This was filmed by a Serb soldier and records the beginning of what would become a massacre. Serb soldiers in red berets march six Muslim prisoners into a clearing and shoot them in cold blood. The killing continued for three days. Eight thousand Muslim men and boys were rounded up, marched off and executed, the only genocide on European soil since the Nazis. Today in Sarajevo, an uneasy peace has taken hold. The mosques have been rebuilt. But even as the city reawakens, the ghosts of the war remain everywhere. This is HASAN Nuhanovic. He's been called the Elie Wiesel of the Bosnian genocide.

HASAN NUHANOVIC, Srebrenica Survivor: So now we are at the Association of Survivors, actually women from Srebrenica and Jeppa, the eastern enclaves in eastern Bosnia that were wiped out by the Bosnian Serb army. The women are all mothers of boys who have been killed at Srebrenica.

WOMAN: [subtitles] I lived through the Srebrenica massacre. I lost my entire family- my husband, son, two brothers, a lot of my family.

WOMAN: [through interpreter] Tomorrow, they say they will catch Karadzic-

JENNIFER GLASSE: This woman is outraged that more than 10 years have passed and the key Bosnian Serb leaders still have not been captured. She says the country can't move on until General Mladic and President Karadzic are brought to justice. Like these women, HASAN is from Srebrenica.

HASAN NUHANOVIC: [showing photos] This is, like, me and my brother in Srebrenica in '74. These are my parents and my brother.

JENNIFER GLASSE: His family was forced to leave their home by Bosnian Serbs when the war broke out. They took refuge in a United Nations camp that was supposed to be a safe haven. This was when General Mladic surrounded the camp and ordered the Muslims out. HASAN's father, Ibro, a respected businessman, was selected to negotiate on behalf of the thousands of Muslims trapped in the camp. This is him meeting General Mladic in a chilling videotape made by the U.N.

IBRO NUHANOVIC: [subtitles] I am Ibro Nuhanovic. I have a degree in economics. I'm an ex-businessman.

HASAN NUHANOVIC: You can see Mladic talking to my father. And my father tried to convey the message from 25,000 refugees to Mladic, which was that we are all civilians inside and outside the U.N. base, so please treat us as civilians.

RATKO MLADIC: [subtitles, U.N. video] I want to help you, but I want absolute cooperation from the civilian population because your army has been defeated. There is no need for your people to get killed, your husbands, your brothers or your neighbors.

HASAN NUHANOVIC: What he wanted to do was try to scare my father and the other two. He said something like, "Nobody can help you now. Not even Allah can help you now. But Mladic can."

RATKO MLADIC: [subtitles] As I told this gentleman, you can survive or you can disappear.

JENNIFER GLASSE: The Dutch soldiers who ran the U.N. camp capitulated to Mladic and ordered that the camp be evacuated. HASAN was working for the U.N. as a translator.

HASAN NUHANOVIC: They gave me a megaphone to address the people. They said, "Tell the people to start leaving the base in groups of five." People wanted to remain inside the base, but the Dutch decided to throw them out. When they reached the gate, when they saw the Serb soldiers standing there next to the Dutch soldiers, pushing the men and the boys away from their sisters, wives, children - you know, there was a separation taking place right there at the gate - some of them actually realized at that very moment that something's wrong, "I'm not going to any safe place." [www.pbs.org: Read HASAN's full story]

JENNIFER GLASSE: HASAN's family was one of the last to leave. As a U.N. translator, HASAN was allowed to stay.

HASAN NUHANOVIC: I was walking behind them, and I was screaming and I was saying, "I'm coming with you." But my brother turned around- he was six years younger than me. He turned around and he started screaming right in my face. He said, "You are not coming with me, you're going to stay inside, because you can stay," you know? And that was the last time I saw my family. They walked out, the Dutch expelled them from the base, and I never saw them again.

JENNIFER GLASSE: It's been 10 years. The mass graves at Srebrenica are still being exhumed. Indicted for genocide, Mladic and his commander-in-chief, Radovan Karadzic, are wanted by the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, but the two men remain fugitives. The chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, has visited the mass graves and collected evidence that she hopes will one day convict Mladic and Karadzic.

[www.pbs.org: Reflections on the genocide]

CARLA DEL PONTE, Chief Prosecutor, The Hague: You have survivors, you have victims who expect justice. And of course, Srebrenica is a genocide. It is a factual and legal, recognized genocide, and Mladic is one of the most responsible for this genocide.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Last December, Del Ponte reminded the U.N. Security Council that the world has allowed the Bosnian Serb leaders to get away with murder.

CARLA DEL PONTE: For 10 years, the international community has been playing cat and mouse with Karadzic and Mladic. And for much of this time, the cats chose to wear blindfolds, to claw at each other, and to allow the mice to run from one hole to another.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Back in Bosnia, I set out for Pale, the town that served as the wartime command center for General Mladic and President Karadzic. For years after the war, they were seen here frequently. At a local pizzeria, I met a man who said that former president Radovan Karadzic had lived near him.

MAN AT PIZZERIA: [subtitles] I saw Karadzic so many times. We were living in the same neighborhood.

JENNIFER GLASSE: It was a few years after the war, and this man was a local police officer.

[on camera] He was an indicted war criminal then. Did you feel that you should have arrested him?

MAN: No.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Why not?

[voice-over] He tells us, in those days, no one would dare arrest Karadzic.

[on camera] I mean, what about now? Where is Radovan Karadzic now?

[voice-over] He comes and goes, says the former cop, like Zorro. [on camera] Do you think he's here in Bosnia?

MAN: [subtitles] I can't rule it out.

JENNIFER GLASSE: [voice-over] He takes us to the neighborhood where Radovan Karadzic lived after the war. So many former Bosnian Serb leaders lived here that our translator called it "war criminal alley." This is Karadzic's house. We've been told his daughter and his wife still live here. As soon as we pull up, the local police arrive and tell us to stop filming.

INTERPRETER: They are from the police. Please introduce yourself. Take your camera-

JENNIFER GLASSE: Ten years after the war, this is still Radovan Karadzic's town. The next day, I went to the police station in Pale. Mladic and Karadzic used this building as their wartime headquarters. Now, inside, they're on a wanted poster. [on camera] There's Karadzic. [voice-over] The police spokesman here was once an aide to President Karadzic. [on camera] How far are his policemen willing to go to find Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic?

RADOVAN PAJIC, Police Spokesman: [subtitles] Be assured that the police are gathering all relevant information, and everyone will be held responsible. It is only a matter of time.

JENNIFER GLASSE: I mean, no offense, but you know, they've been indicted since 1995. You have a professional police force. I mean, what day are you waiting for?

RADOVAN PAJIC: [subtitles] Please understand, the police are doing everything to carry out this task. If they show up, we'll arrest them.

JENNIFER GLASSE: [voice-over] He told me that tracking down international war criminals is too big a job for a small police force.

RADOVAN PAJIC: [subtitles] Ask NATO, which has much better technology and capabilities. They have the ability to act without a warrant and to carry out investigations. [www.pbs.org: Read the producer's journal]

JENNIFER GLASSE: We caught a ride with European peacekeepers to the NATO base outside Sarajevo. NATO troops intervened to stop the civil war back in 1995, but they failed to capture Mladic and Karadzic. Today, a small NATO force remains here, trying to track them down. NATO Brigadier General Bill Weber is in charge of the search.

Brig. Gen. BILL WEBER, NATO: My greatest hope is that I become a footnote in history that says, on my watch, Karadzic and Mladic were apprehended, or killed or arrested or transported to the moon. What are we doing in terms of PIFWICS?

JENNIFER GLASSE: PIFWICS, "Persons Indicted For War Crimes." And the general told us there'd been success in rounding them up.

Gen. BILL WEBER: Well, let's just take a look at the last 161 PIFWICS. I've got six left out there. How many did I have a year ago? I had 22 out there. Today I have six. So over the last year alone, sixteen PIFWICS have been apprehended.

JENNIFER GLASSE: But none of those war criminals were captured by NATO. We heard many had surrendered in exchange for cash payments from the Bosnian Serb government.

[on camera] Is this a military thing? Is this a political thing? What is it that brought those PIFWICS in?

Gen. BILL WEBER: There may be some economic incentives for people turning themselves in. I don't know. I'm not part of those discussions and I'm not engaged in those kinds of discussions. And I won't confirm or deny that, in fact, they go on. I don't know. I don't have enough information to tell you.

JENNIFER GLASSE: [voice-over] So why, I ask, is it taking so long to capture Mladic and Karadzic?

Gen. BILL WEBER: It takes one guy to hide a guy, if that. I mean it's very difficult work.

CARLA DEL PONTE: I cannot accept such kind of answer because 10 years passed, so I want to know, what have you done to locate him in 10 years? So I want to know exactly what was done, what are the informations we receive, starting from the first day, from the arrest warrant. But you never receive an answer.

Gen. BILL WEBER: Look, we've had the whole United States intelligence community and military looking for al Qaeda for how many years? Since 9/11, OK? And where's the al Qaeda leadership today? I don't know. Where's bin Laden? You haven't seen him lately, right? Well, we haven't seen Mladic and Karadzic lately, either. So it- in some cases, it doesn't take much to hide these people.

JENNIFER GLASSE: We crossed the border into Serbia. In the capital, Belgrade, rumors were flying that General Mladic had been hiding here and that his arrest was imminent. I met a journalist, Saska Rankovic, who has covered the Mladic case for years.

SASKA RANKOVIC, Serbian Journalist: Ratko Mladic for me is the biggest criminal in history of Serbia. He is a war criminal, and he is [unintelligible] a mass killer, basically. And I think the international community is- have one demand from Serbia, and that demand, at this point, is Ratko Mladic. Everyone is talking here about Ratko Mladic.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Saska took us to meet one of her sources, the former head of the secret police, Goran Petrovic. Petrovic was in charge during a brief period when the democratic opposition held power. He aggressively pursued the indicted war criminals.

GORAN PETROVIC: [subtitles] We worked hard to arrest them and bring them to justice.

JENNIFER GLASSE: In 2001, Petrovic organized a dramatic raid on the home of the former Serb dictator, Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic was turned over to the war crimes tribunal in the Hague. Petrovic wanted to go after General Mladic next.

GORAN PETROVIC: [subtitles] Already in 2001, we knew that Mladic was in Serbia, that he was protected by the Yugoslav army.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Then, two years ago in a quiet Belgrade neighborhood, an amazing discovery, a secret bunker, a two-square mile underground complex. And its existence was known only to the military elite. It was originally built for Marshal Tito, Yugoslavia's cold war leader. General Mladic reportedly hid here, a guest of the Serb army.

HASAN NUHANOVIC, Srebrenica Survivor: What frustrates me is that Mladic committed this crime in '95. It's now 2006, so 10, 11 years as a free man. Even if he is arrested now today, as we are sitting in this room, he was given 10 years of life by someone as a gift, you know, to live on as a free man.

JENNIFER GLASSE: There are charges that Mladic was protected at the highest levels.

GORAN PETROVIC: [subtitles] Why haven't we capture Mladic, if we knew where he was? The reason is simple. He was under the protection of President Kostunica.

JENNIFER GLASSE: Now prime minister, Kostunica is a Serb nationalist. He's under intense pressure from European leaders and Carla Del Ponte.

CARLA DEL PONTE: I expect Mladic to be in The Hague. He knows that for the future of Serbia, he must deliver Mladic. And he told me that.

JENNIFER GLASSE: We requested an interview with Kostunica to ask him about the allegation that he has protected Mladic. He did not respond. There are many here who want change, perhaps even a majority, who want to join Europe and get over the past. But the country is still haunted by history. This month, when Slobodan Milosevic's body was brought back to Belgrade, 50,000 loyal supporters turned out to show their respect to the man who died in a prison cell, on trial for war crimes.

SUPPORTERS: [subtitles] Slobo! Slobo! Slobo!

JENNIFER GLASSE: He is a hero here, as are Mladic and Karadzic. These people swear they will never hand over the men who got away.

SUPPORTERS: [subtitles] We won't give up Mladic! We won't give up Mladic!

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