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Layers of make-believe

• Mark Mardell
• 23 Jul 08, 05:50 PM

Yes, we worked out in the end the Karadzic blog is a fake: the domain name was bought three days ago.

And sorry about calling The Hague the capital. But this truly surprises me - I though the whole point was that the seat of government WAS the capital, rather than the main city, hence Washington not New York, Canberra not Sydney, and so on. So what is the definition of "capital city"?

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Spotlight on tribunal

• Mark Mardell
• 23 Jul 08, 11:16 AM

The Chinese herbalist has not yet arrived in the cell being made ready for him. Not only did Radovan Karadzic have the gall to appear on video at alternative medicine conferences, he even had his . I don't know for sure if this is genuine, but check it out. Also check out the e-mail address -some things are beyond irony: healingwounds@dragandabic.com

Behind the jutting-out razor wire and high walls on the outskirts of The Hague are 37 prisoners, all accused or convicted war criminals. Eight TV trucks and many fellow hacks wait to see when a helicopter may fly over those sturdy walls and deliver a 38th. It probably won't be today: his lawyer says Mr Karadzic has three days to appeal, and he's going to leave it to the very last moment.

The prison is a 10-minute drive away from the . It is where Mr Karadzic's eventual fate will be pronounced, but it is also where Serbs should turn their ears to hear more immediate news of their country's future. It will come from a man who should understand the complexity of ethnic disputes - he is from Belgium's German-speaking minority. took over at the beginning of this year from Carla del Ponte as the tribunal's chief prosecutor. The European Union will take its cue from him. If he says Serbia is "co-operating fully" then it will be rewarded by the EU.

So far the EU's foreign ministers have been cautious. They've praised the fact of the arrest, but they don't want to fall over themselves rewarding Serbia too early. The Swedes, Belgians and Dutch are particularly concerned not to count their war criminals before they are all caught. But if Mr Brammertz speaks out then a meeting of EU ambassadors is likely to look at ways of offering an improved trade deal and they could look at something that matters to a lot of Serbs - loosening the visa requirements for visiting EU countries.

BoraTok (comment 11 yesterday) makes a good point: what is the link between a criminal being caught and their country joining the EU? Most European Union governments are, if not wracked with guilt, at least deeply aware of their multiple failures in the Yugoslav civil wars and want to ensure that region never again returns to violence. They believe that depends on a somewhat penitent Serbia joining most of the rest of Europe in the EU, and using that organisation as a forum for solving regional disputes, rather than what might be called more traditional methods. There is a lot you could question in the last sentence, but I am explaining how they think, not promoting it.

While Serbs wait to hear whether the EU will reward their government, we drum our thumbs at The Hague. This sort of story is what is often at the core of hard news. Not just an interesting tale with real significance. I rather mean a lot of frantic rushing around, followed by a lot of waiting around. And then, I suspect a picture of a helicopter.

It also fits one of my definitions of a classic news story: something that manages to be a complete surprise and utterly predictable. I was just about to resume the Newsnight filming I wrote about earlier, after a short break (Mick aka Slugger reveals my whereabouts in his .) I had a mad journey that started at seven o'clock in a field in Dorset, and then delivered me in London for a lunchtime meeting, carried on by tube and train to Surrey to pick up my bag, and ended up in a Berlin hotel at just after midnight. As I switched on the TV, a breaking news flash starts crawling across the bottom of the screen and I started re-packing my bags and phoning the news desk.

That's what I mean. To me and everyone else a complete and total surprise that it happened at that moment (which excites journalists), but predictable in that it would happen at some time (which reassures journalists). But it was also a surprise that it was Mr Karadzic who was caught first. Many thought he really was out of reach, in the mountains or overseas, but that the fugitive Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic could be found quickly if the will was there. But no-one I have spoken to thinks there is any deeper interpretation to be read into this fact. But it's something to talk about while we wait for a fleeting glimpse of a helicopter.

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