The genocide trial of Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic is set to continue in The Hague today despite his boycott of the proceedings. But his legal advisors announced this morning that he will attend a tribunal hearing on Tuesday.

Prosecutor Alan Tieger is scheduled to conclude his opening statement in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia which had started on Tuesday by branding Karadzic the "supreme commander" of an ethnic cleansing campaign of Muslims and Croats during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

Karadzic, 64, refused to leave his prison cell to come to court when the trial began last Monday, demanding more time to prepare his defence, which he is conducting himself. He says he needs more time to read a million pages of prosecution evidence and study the statements of hundreds of witnesses.

His absence last Monday prompted a one-day adjournment, but when Karadzic was again absent on Tuesday presiding judge O-Gon Kwon ordered the proceedings to continue without him for now.

Karadzic, who faces 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, vowed to remain absent when his trial resumes today.

Judge O-Gon has ordered a special hearing to be held tomorrow to determine how to proceed with the case in the face of his continued defiance.

Options include proceeding with the trial in Karadzic's absence or imposing a defence lawyer on him -- which could cause a delay of several months as that person acquaints himself with the case.

Marco Sladojevic, a legal adviser for Karadzic, has said his client will attend Tuesday's procedural hearing, when the defence and prosecution will make submissions.

"He will appear tomorrow because he wants to help find a solution to the problem. We hope that the trial chamber will basically grant us the time that is necessary to prepare. We calculated that we needed 10 months to prepare and that is the only position we have," Sladojevic said.

Tuesday's hearing will investigate ways to resolve the impasse, with options including continuing the trial in Karadzic's absence, assigning counsel, seeking outside advice, and adjourning to allow assigned legal counsel time to prepare.

However, Sladojevic said Karadzic was likely to refuse to talk with an imposed counsel.

Arrested on a Belgrade bus in July last year after 13 years on the run, Karadzic is charged with responsibility for the massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys at the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995 -- what Tieger called "the largest mass killing on European soil since World War II."

He is also charged for the 44-month siege of Sarajevo, which ended in November 1995 after some 10,000 people, many of them civilians, were killed.

The Bosnian war claimed about 100,000 lives and caused 2.2 million people to flee their homes.