Leader of the community's unofficial government 1992-96. He cofounded the Serbian Democratic Party of Bosnia Herzegovina 1990 and launched the siege of Sarajevo 1992, plunging the country into a prolonged and bloody civil war. A succession of peace initiatives for the region failed due to his ambitious demands for Serbian territory, and he was subsequently implicated in war crimes allegedly committed in Bosnia Herzegovina. In the autumn of 1995, in the wake of a sustained NATO bombardment of Bosnian Serb positions around Sarajevo, Karadzic agreed to enter peace negotiations; in Nov he signed the US sponsored Dayton peace accord, under the terms of which he was forced to step down as the Bosnian Serb prime minister. The accord divided Bosnia into separate Moslem, Croat, and Serb areas, and although this seemingly excluded him from further power, he remained a dominant backstage force. He was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity at the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, Nov 1995. He stepped down as party leader July 1996. Distrusted in the West and viewed as an intransigent figure, for many Bosnian Serbs he is a moderate.
