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Now that we have seen and heard Radovan Karadzic in the dock, facing a grim litany of charges, we might as well consider two issues that he raised.

For Karadzic's defence, in as much as we have now heard one, poses questions about how far ends justify means and also how far international criminal justice, applied to the leaders of warring factions, can ever be shorn of politics.

The former Bosnian Serb leader argued firstly that in 1996, following the Dayton peace agreement, which ended the Bosnian war, he was promised by the agreement's architect, Richard Holbrooke, that he would avoid prosecution if he quit public life and disappeared.

Mr Karadzic also alleged that he had been detained by unknown persons three days before his official arrest, and not allowed to communicate prior to his delivery to a special court in Belgrade. The Serbian rumour mill has it alternatively that he was lifted by Serbian intelligence agents, by bounty hunters, or by western intelligence agencies.

We can expect vociferous denials of these claims, but in some measure there is substance to them. Firstly it was well understood in Nato after it moved into Bosnia, that no serious attempt to arrest Mr Karadzic was to be made - and the top civilian representative Carl Bildt confirmed as much on Newsnight last week.

Did Nato's inaction arise solely from a desire not to inflame Serb opinion or is this evidence of a deal ? Well, here's a clue - no determined efforts were made to arrest Mr Karadzic under President Clinton's administration. Dayton was a triumph of that president's diplomacy, not so George W. Bush.

Now you might argue that it doesn't matter what kind of promises are made to a rogue like Radovan Karadzic, so long as it stops a ghastly war. Something similar happened with Charles Taylor in Liberia. Despite his truly grim record of atrocities, he was first given sanctuary in Nigeria under a deal, but later that was torn up and he was put on a plane to the International Criminal Court.

The problem with making deals cynically is that others take note. Many believe this is why we are where we are with Robert Mugabe. He simply does not believe those who might try to convince him that he could retire quietly to the countryside if he handed power to Morgan Tsvangarai.

In short, this is the dilemma with indicting leaders. They are the ones capable of leading their people into peace deals, of ending horrific conflicts. Would it be satisfactory for Bosnian Serb officers to be prosecuted for their crimes but not Radovan Karadzic ? Certainly, I favour prosecuting the generals or the actual torturers - forget for the moment the narrative that they are not ultimately responsible, since they are clearly liable for their own acts.

Does that mean letting go Karadzic or Slobodan Milosevic - the overall Serbian leader (now dead) who many consider the man ultimately responsible for the Balkan tragedy of the 1990s ? My answer would be, that if such leaders are promised immunity as part of a peace agreement, that deal, however distasteful or deniable, will have to be honoured, since others around the world will be watching.

If Mr Karadzic proves his case on this point, it may not save him from prosecution, but it will be deeply discreditable to American diplomacy.

The other issue concerns bringing someone to a court by illegal, or more accurately extra-legal or unorthodox, means. Did bounty hunters collar Karadzic ? Many of you may not be bothered. It's what Israel did with the Nazi Adolf Eichman in 1960 or Turkey with Abdullah Ocalan, leader of the PKK Kurdish separatist group in 1999 - bundled them on planes.

At least Mr Karadzic went through some sort of extradition formality in Belgrade. If bringing a war criminal or terrorist to trial this way doesn't bother you, consider the Americans doing the same with al-Qaeda.

Does rendition in this context matter ? I do not mean secret jails or torture in countries where such treatment of suspects is possible. By rendition, I simply mean apprehending someone overseas without the usual procedures and bringing them before a court for trial.

The way people process this dilemma depends to a great degree on their political stance. It's like those who thought the Iraq war illegal because it was not specifically sanctioned by a UN Security Council resolution - but approved of Nato's war over Kosovo, similarly bereft of Security Council cover. Neo-cons thought Iraq was justified, liberals that Kosovo was a daring departure in 'humanitarian intervention'.

All of this then brings us back to the politics of indictments and trials, notably of leaders - the people who symbolise a particular point of view. It is often going to problematic, and whatever the assurances of those involved in prosecuting such cases, political motives are bound to be ascribed to them. One thing is clear though from yesterday's proceedings in the Hague - the court's determination to push ahead rapidly.

For down the line in a year and a half the Tribunal's UN Yugoslav mandate will expire. This will give Russia its chance, if it wishes to pose once more as the defender of slav interests, to be obstructive about renewing it. Or would that simply be playing politics ?

In these days of spy satellites, CCTV surveillance and biometrics, how does someone escape international justice for 13 years?

It's a question worth asking following the capture of Radovan Karadzic, since it's equally relevant to the question of how Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar remain at large after worldwide manhunts.

The view about Karadzic used to be that he was hiding in some mountain shack in eastern Bosnia, living the life of a peasant hermit.

But now he has been arrested we know that he was a successful Second Lifer, alias Dragan Dabic, plying his trade on Serbia's alternative medicine scene. He practised at a clinic in New Belgrade, attended conferences and wrote regularly for a magazine called 'Healthy Life', of all things.

It has long been suspected that Karadzic was aided by sympathisers, including people within the Serbian intelligence services.

Undoubtedly this is true, but it is remarkable that he had spent years living openly in his new life, and had even become a minor public figure as Dragan Dabic. Had nobody recognised his voice, his accent or his mannerisms?

Karadzic was a man with a large price on his head, Belgrade a city with plenty of people who find the Bosnian Serb leader's ideologies abhorrent or lost their homes as a result of them. In other words, Karadzic alias Dabic passed people every day who could not be relied upon to keep his secret and indeed might have had a motive for uncovering him.

The answer seems to be that if you change your appearance sufficiently, have a professionally supplied new identity (friends in the intelligence services are always helpful), and a tight network of those willing to offer shelter, you will go far.

But the other elements in this were that Karadzic retained the sympathy of many Serbs, (perhaps some of those who met Dr Dabic were suspicious but chose not to reveal it) and of friends in high places in the Serbian state. These protectors were evidently brushed aside by the new pro-western government of President Tadic.

Evaded justice

Many of the same factors that conspired in Karadazic's favour have evidently kept his fellow indictee, Gen Ratko Mladic at liberty too. Some of them clearly operate in the case of the al-Qaeda leadership.

With connections, some popular sympathy, a good disguise and sufficient nerve it is therefore possible to evade international justice or the forces of a state as powerful as the USA for many years.

This remains true despite all of the advances in surveillance technology and the reach of global intelligence organisations. But while Karadzic was successful for 13 years, ultimately he was caught, and that is a lesson in the need for perseverance.

The idea of Israel swapping Lebanese prisoners for the corpses of two of its soldiers held by Hezbollah is an interesting sign of the times for many reasons.

Firstly, as Lebanese commentators have been quick to point out, it bolsters the Shia Islamic movement's standing and to some extent post-rationalises their abduction of those Israeli soldiers almost two years ago.

However the deal is more interesting in my view because it is another sign of what you might call the opportunistic peace-making or mediation going on in the Middle East at the moment.

The Germans helped to negotiate the Israel-Hezbollah swap. France played host to the latest meeting between the Israeli prime minister and the Palestinian president, and arranged discreet contacts with the Syrians at the margins of their Mediterranean summit.

Egypt meanwhile continues to try and build on the fragile Gaza truce brokered by its intelligence people acting as intermediaries between Hamas and Israel. Turkey, another regional player keen to get involved, has been hosting Israeli-Syrian talks over the future of the Golan Heights.

These various efforts are evidence of a rush of diplomatic oxygen made possible into the vacuum left by America.

US diplomats like to insist they are still battling to make possible President Bush's aim of a negotiated deal between Israel and the Palestinians before the end of the year but very few observers think that is still possible. Instead the Israelis and others have written off the Americans - largely because of the pending US presidential elections.

'Do a Clinton'

I can remember one Israeli minister telling me, before the Bush/Gore contest, "we can forget about US initiatives for the next 18 months".

He was factoring in an entire year's campaigning followed by the inauguration of a new administration, the Congressional confirmation of its key officials (notably the Secretary of State) and the time it then takes the new incumbent to get a plan up and running. In the current case, this means the key players have written off the US for 2008 and early 2009.

Now this view runs counter to the analysis being put about by some, that every American president aspires to 'do a Clinton' and seal a dramatic Middle East peace deal in the dying days of his second term. President Clinton, with his Camp David Israeli-Palestinian summit, was however more the exception than the rule.

He had spent years building relations (with Yasser Arafat in particular, who visited the White House more times than any other foreign leader), and tried to use this leverage to advantage. President Bush has, to put it politely, not given the same 'focus' to building relations with Middle East leaders. In fact, he doesn't really have a relationship with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, Hamas or Hezbollah.

So, in these dying days of the Bush presidency, Turkey or France feel the time is right to have a go brokering an Israeli-Syrian peace. Egypt, has flexed its influence in Gaza and the Germans have made use of long term ties with Hezbollah.

Golan Heights

Some of this work is little more than palliative - trying to ease the pain of impossible situations. The Gaza work - including Tony Blair's planned visit - or the Hezbollah prisoner deals fall into this category.

It is the Israeli-Syrian track that could possibly emerge into something more substantial. If Israel negotiated the return of the Golan Heights, which it seized in 1967, and Syria made peace, that could also bring profound change to the situation in Lebanon, where Hezbollah has long relied on Syria's help.

It's still too early to say whether there's a real hope of peace in that sector, and a final deal would almost certainly require a substantial American guarantee - possibly in the form of thousands of US troops on the Golan Heights.

But perhaps the diplomatic Sherpas, be they Turkish or French - will have got the two sides close enough to think seriously about a deal by the time a new US president is inaugurated in January 2009.

The murder of was carried out with the backing of the Russian state, according to Whitehall sources. A senior British security official has told Newsnight "we very strongly believe the Litvinenko case to have had some state involvement; there are very strong indications that it was a state action".
Furthermore officers at MI5 believe they thwarted an attempt last June to kill , the London based critic of then president Vladimir Putin.

A Russian citizen, called 'Mr A' in the report but whose identity is known to Newsnight was arrested on 21 June 2007 and deported four days later. Speaking on Newsnight, Mr Berezovsky said that plain clothes officers came to his office soon after the suspected hitman arrived in London on 16 June and urged the businessman to leave the UK immediately. Mr Berezovsky speculates that Mr A was not put on trial because British intelligence did not want to reveal the source who had warned them that Mr A was travelling to London.

According to the senior security source, the Berezovsky incident of June 2007 showed "continued willingness to consider operations against people in the West". MI5 believes that the FSB, Russia's internal security organisation, operated under President Putin with far more autonomy than the organisations usually entrusted with foreign espionage operations (the SVR and GRU). The senior security source feels that the targeting of Russian government critics in the UK has serious diplomatic repercussions: "[it] messes up the relationship big time".

In recent months the Director General of the Security Service, , has expressed concern about the high level of espionage operations by Russian spies under diplomatic cover. The service believes there are about 30 operating from Russian diplomatic missions in the UK. However the evidence of FSB involvement in the Litvinenko and Berezovsky cases has taken tensions between the two countries to a new level.

Check out Newsnight's previous reports on Litvinenko case:

As a boy, I watched night after night covering the Watergate crisis in Washington.

He had gained my father's seal of approval - which put him in a pretty rare club as far as our household was concerned - and each night we would gather around the TV to hear Charles's latest take on the scandal that was engulfing . His words were delivered with clarity, gravity, and with beautiful precision.

In one of life's unexpected bonuses, our paths crossed years later at Newsnight. As a young assistant producer on the programme, I was too much in awe of him to initiate a conversation, and it had to wait years, until I came back as a reporter myself, for me to get to know him.

He wore a Combined Operations tie and this provided an opening for one conversation, in which he told me about his wartime service in the commandos. Charles, with his fluent German, had gravitated to intelligence work after the war, serving in Berlin at a time when it was the global epicentre of spying and double dealing.

Charles's experiences during the war (and indeed growing up in Germany in the 1930s) formed his very distinctive journalistic personality. He rejected cant, loathed injustice, and was completely intrepid. His attitude to officialdom was not one of childish scorn or contempt, but at the same time it was completely impossible for any interviewee to intimidate or over-awe him.

As Newsnight reporters, we rarely worked together side by side in the field, but one moment came in 1991 following the failure of the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. Our respective producers were so keen to out-do one another that there was a danger of fierce rivalry building up between teams.

Charles and I could feel the tension, so we simply resolved to meet up each evening and tell one another everything we were up to, without our producers' knowledge. As well as being a great idealist in his reporting, he could be a great pragmatist too.

Every person is formed to a large extent by their times or experiences. But it is precisely the extraordinary trajectory of Charles's life - from Nazi Germany, to the Second World War or America's crises of the 1960s and 1970s - that will make him quite irreplaceable.

Britain has ordered its , and the decision has as much to do with the Royal Navy's image of itself as force to be reckoned with as it does with delivering enhanced combat power.

So while many in the Ministry of Defence (usually officers from the RAF or Army...) predict that the cost will soar far ahead of the projected £4bn, that the programme will bleed the other services white or even that the carriers will never get built, ministers would be unwise to under-estimate what is at stake here.

Whatever the current state of play between cash-strapped armed forces chiefs and the government it is as well to remember that the last time one of the heads of the services actually resigned was in 1966, when Admiral Sir Richard Luce, the First Sea Lord, walked out over the Labour government's decision to phase out aircraft carriers.

The navy spent the next few years subverting that decision, turning anti-submarine ships of the Invincible class into the mini-carriers that remain in service. When the Tories proposed mothballing those ships in 1981, it prompted another resignation - that of Keith Speed, the Navy Minister.

Questions remain concerning the new carriers' cost, the ability of a reduced Royal Navy to crew and run two super-ships with a complement of 1,500 each, and the effects on the rest of the budget.

How will these capital ships be protected if minesweepers, anti-submarine or anti-air vessels are all cut back in order to finance the programme ? The current First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Jonathon Band is clearly so concerned about the Royal Nay remaining a, "serious player", that he delivered his own veiled threat to resign in front of a Commons committee in March.

The defence argument for aircraft carriers is pretty sound. As floating national bases operating free of the political constraints that constrain air fields in many countries in order to; hit at Britain's enemies, be used in shows of force to deter conflict, deliver disaster relief; or evacuate people from civil wars.

Nevertheless, as the programme goes ahead, aiming to deliver the ships in 2014 and 2016, the budgetary pressure will become enormous. The temptation to delay the programme will probably prove irresistible since it will spread the spending over more years, and the aircraft they are meant to operate, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, will not be ready as soon as this (optimistic) schedule for the ships.

Perhaps the bigger and more puzzling question about the future of the Royal Navy is why the government decided so swiftly last year to upgrade its Trident ballistic missile submarines, at a cost of more than £15bn.

Even many of the senior naval officers I spoke to were dubious about the value of this project, preferring to convert their future hunter-killer submarines to fire nuclear-armed cruise missiles instead. When looking for future economies in Britain's unfeasibly over-loaded defence budget ministers would be better advised to re-visit the Trident decision than to threaten the carriers and with them, once more, the Royal Navy's belief that it is still a 'serious player' on the high seas.