Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic said he would end his boycott of a UN war crimes court on Tuesday and make his first appearance since the start last week of his trial for suspected genocide.

"I will ... be pleased to attend the status conference on Tuesday November 3, 2009," the Bosnian Serb wartime leader said in a letter addressed to presiding judge O-Gon Kwon and made public on Monday by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Tuesday's hearing is to seek to determine how to proceed with the case given that Karadzic has boycotted the trial since it started on October 26 to insist on more time to prepare his defence, which he is conducting himself.

"I hope we will be able to find a solution which will lead not only to an expeditious trial, but a fair one," said Karadzic's letter, dated Sunday.

Options raised by the judge 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.

Karadzic insisted in his letter that he would not be present for the resumption of his trial in The Hague at 2:15 pm (1315 GMT) on Monday.

"I have not had adequate time to prepare for it," he repeated in his letter to the judge.

Prosecutor Alan Tieger is scheduled to conclude his opening statement, which he opened on October 27 by branding Karadzic the "supreme commander" of an "ethnic cleansing" campaign of Croats and Muslims during Bosnia's 1992-95 war.

Karadzic, 64, refused to leave his prison cell to come to court when the trial began, prompting a one-day adjournment.

When he was again absent the following day, the judge ordered the proceedings to continue without him for now, and ordered a procedural hearing to be held on November 3 to hear arguments by the prosecution and defence on how to proceed in the face of Karadzic's defiance.

The Bosnian Serb wartime leader faces 11 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Marko Sladojevic, a legal adviser for Karadzic, earlier told AFP his client wished to appear before the tribunal on Tuesday because "he wants to participate and help find a solution".

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.

Karadzic, who has insisted he will not accept imposed counsel, claims he needs more time to read a million pages of prosecution evidence and study the statements of hundreds of witnesses.

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