Hunt for Karadzic: Paddy goes OTT

No one was more excited at the news of Radovan Karadzic's capture in Serbia than Lord (Paddy) Ashdown, the former Lib Dem leader who became international High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2002 to 2006 - some called him the 'Viceroy of Bosnia' at the time. But while correspondents in the former Yugoslavia remember him as a besuited figure, meeting and greeting delegations and senior politicos such as Colin Powell, it seems Ashdown has a far more 'action man' memory of his time in the job.

Speaking on the BBC Radio Today programme about the hunt for Karadzic, a breathless Paddy told how he "chased this man over the hills and through the forests of Bosnia". He went on: "The four years I spent looking for him were peppered by rumours about where he was: in this café, on that mountain, in that valley, in that piece of forest."

"Dear old Paddy, always the boy scout," reflected one former correspondent. "It was the French secret service who were running through the woods after Karadzic. I don't recall Paddy putting on his hiking boots." (Continued below)

If only Ashdown had found the wily Karadzic he might have stopped him publishing - while still on the run, and to the horror of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague - a terrible book of poetry. The poems were described on publication in 2005 as being "as bad in the original as they sound in the English translation". This one was called 'Sarajevo'...

I hear the misfortune threads
Turned into a beetle as if an old singer Is crushed by the silence and turned into a voice.

The town burns like a piece of incense
In the smoke rumbles our consciousness.
Empty suits slide down the town.
Red is the stone that dies, built into a house. The Plague!

Calm. The army of armed poplar tree
Marches up the hill, within itself.
The aggressor air storms our souls
and once you are human and then you are an air creature.

I know that all of these are the preparations of the scream:
What does the black metal in the garage have for us?
Look how fear turned into a spider
Looking for the answer at his computer.