Prosecution 'confident' ahead of Karadzic trial

The chief prosecutor in the genocide case against Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic said Tuesday his team was confident ahead of next week's start of the trial 14 years after the first indictment.

- The prosecution is ready to have this trial starting, and we want to move on - Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, told journalists in The Hague.

- We are pleased that finally the trial can start. -

Karadzic is set to go on trial next Monday on 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The trial is expected to conclude in 2012

He is charged as one of the alleged authors of a plan to "permanently remove" Bosnian Muslims and Croats from Serb-claimed territory -- including for his role in the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that left 10,000 people dead and the July 1995 massacre of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica.

Karadzic, 64, was arrested on a Belgrade bus in July last year after 13 years on the run.

The trial is expected to conclude in 2012, with 300 hours having been set aside for the prosecution to present its case.

Karadzic, who denies all the charges against him, risks life in jail. He will present his own defence at trial.

Bosnia's inter-ethnic 1992-95 war cost an estimated 100,000 lives.