Radovan Karadzic, the wartime Bosnian Serb leader listed by the International War Crimes Tribunal as its most wanted man, has predicted that he will one day write an account of his life that will become so successful he will be nominated for a Nobel prize.

In a rare interview with a Bosnian weekly paper, Mr Karadzic said he was finishing an autobiography called Radovan and Serbia to be published by a western publisher later this year. "The book will become a bestseller, and I'm sure even be proposed for the Nobel prize," he said.

The Mostar-based Danas said Mr Karadzic, indicted twice by the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague along with his wartime military chief Ratko Mladic, had invited its reporter to interview him in a Serb-controlled village in southern Herzegovina. The reporter was brought to the interview blindfolded, but Mr Karadzic denied he was in hiding.

"I am not in hiding at all, my people are hiding me. You can ask any Serb if he would betray Radovan Karadzic... I walk around normally, go to baptism ceremonies, associate with my friends and my soldiers, I have recently been even in Sarajevo," he said.

"I will not fall into their hands alive," he added, in what appeared to be his first public comments since he was forced to resign from politics in July 1996 under international pressure.

"Although if I knew my surrender would benefit the Serb people and their interests, I would do it immediately," he said.

"But it would be absurd to surrender to those who have killed Serb children and the elderly. And it would be even more stupid to believe that tribunal would be unbiased."

During a visit to Bosnia last week, the chief prosecutor of the war crimes tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, said she wanted the arrest of all 38 people indicted and still at large. Mr Karadzic was a priority, she said.

"Del Ponte said the other day that a search for Karadzic was a mere cipher. Please let her know it will remain so," Mr Karadzic told the newspaper.

Mr Karadzic's autobiography may shed new light on the role of Yugoslavia's former president Slobodan Milosevic, who backed Bosnian Serbs in their fight to carve out an ethnically pure Serb state but then distanced himself from them in 1995.

"My book will explain many things and it will cast a dark shadow over Slobodan Milosevic. I will never forgive him, and neither will the Serb people, for the fact that he set up borders between Serbia and Bosnian Serbs," he said.

The United States has offered a reward of up to £3.5m for information leading to the arrests of Mr Karadzic and Mr Mladic.

"Don't even dare to try and use this interview to earn these millions offered by those international fools," he warned the reporter.