SEEDS OF EVIL

If Richard Holbrooke is half as good at investment banking as he is at nose-to-nose negotiating, he must be doing very well for his Wall Street firm. After an acrimonious second session--this one 10 hours long--with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic at an official residence outside Belgrade last week, Holbrooke emerged with an agreement that promises to rescue Bosnia and Herzegovina's national elections, which are scheduled for Sept. 14. The former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State had slipped back into his role as special envoy to the Balkans. His assignment was to sit down with Milosevic and persuade--or bully--him into ousting Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, first from power and then from sanctuary in Bosnia. Under the terms of the peace agreement Holbrooke pounded into place in Dayton, Ohio, last year, anyone indicted for war crimes cannot take part in elections or hold political office.

Threatening to bar the Serb Democratic Party, which Karadzic headed, from the election and renew international economic sanctions against Serbia, Holbrooke scored at least a half-success. Milosevic and senior Bosnian Serb leaders forced Karadzic to resign his party post and step out of public life. "We fell short of our maximum goal, which is to have Karadzic out of power and out of the country," Holbrooke said in an interview with TIME. But he emphasized that the accord will allow the elections to go forward. Karadzic and his lieutenants have agreed to the text's statement that "[Karadzic] will not appear in public, or on radio or television or other media...or participate in political life in any way." Says Holbrooke: "If they don't comply, we retain leverage."

Karadzic is still protected in the Serb half of Bosnia. But he is also an international fugitive from justice, twice indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity. A year after Bosnian Serb forces commanded by Karadzic and his military chief, Ratko Mladic, seized the U.N.-declared safe area of Srebrenica and slaughtered thousands of Muslims, both soldiers and civilians, the corpses are finally being exhumed. Hundreds have been dug up, many with their wrists wired together, their bones shattered by bullets. An indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in the Hague says Karadzic's crimes are of "almost unparalleled cruelty." He denies the charges, and his Serb compatriots profess to believe him. His support by Bosnian Serbs remains close to the 68% approval rating found in a poll two months ago by the U.S. Information Agency.

With his sweeping gull-wing hairdo, bombastic manner and pseudo-reasonable arguments to the world's press, Karadzic is a very recognizable figure. But who is he really? What made the physician turned politician into an enigmatic "ethnic cleanser"? In search of answers, TIME's correspondents spent several weeks interviewing Karadzic's friends and colleagues, tracing his origins and his life before infamy.