September 20, 2006 12:27 PM

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina-Richard Gere said Wednesday he hopes a film he is making in Bosnia about a pair of journalists hunting a war crimes suspect will raise questions about why those wanted for the Balkans' worst wartime atrocities remain at large.

The film, "Spring Break in Bosnia," is being shot in Bosnia and Croatia. Gere and Terrence Howard play reporters searching for a fictional war criminal who bears a close resemblance to one of the Balkans' last top suspects, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

Karadzic and his wartime general, Ratko Mladic, have been on the run since their indictments by the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at the end of Bosnia's devastating civil war more than a decade ago.

"We literary talk about this in the film. It's a question that is asked a lot: Why aren't these guys found?" Gere told reporters in Sarajevo.

Director Richard Shepard said he also hopes the film "is asking a bigger question, which is why are there war criminals throughout the world who the world said they want to catch and yet they don't."

"Osama bin Laden is the most wanted war criminal in the world with the largest bounty on his head and some may question if people have a true interest to catch him," Shepard said.

Karadzic is believed to be hiding in Bosnia or Montenegro. He and Mladic are accused of ordering the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, the worst carnage in Europe since World War II.

When the film was announced at the beginning of the year, the joke in Bosnian media was that Gere and his co-star had at least as much of a chance of capturing Karadzic as the international peacekeepers and local police did.

Karadzic's wife and other associates have repeatedly claimed that Karadzic made a deal to step down as president of the Bosnian Serbs in 1996 in return for guarantees that he will never be caught.

Such claims were regularly denied by the U.S. government and other powers who have troops deployed in Bosnia.

The film's director won't reveal who will play the role of the hunted war criminal, a character they said is meant to symbolize all war criminals at large throughout the world.

"It's safe to say that it's not Julia Roberts," said Gere, referring to his "Pretty Woman" co-star.

In the film, the two reporters find their fugitive, and Howard said the movie questions claims that hunting war criminals requires a large force.

Gere said he spoke to many people who went through the war in Sarajevo.

"It was hell. It was pure hell. This was a tragedy of the highest order. I'm interested in people who cause so much mischief, so much suffering.

"I think we can learn from them. Why they are the way they are and why are we so vulnerable to them," Gere said.