Vienna (dpa) - A 95-year-old Nazi-era war crimes suspect says he is ready to stand trial in Croatia, where he is charged with helping deport Jews, Gypsies and Serbs to World War II concentration camps, a newspaper reported Tuesday.

Austria has refused to extradite Milivoj Asner, saying he is unfit to testify or face trial after two court-appointed experts found him senile.

Britain's The Sun newspaper revived the case this week with images that showed Asner and his wife mingling with fans at the Euro 2008 football championship in the Austrian city of Klagenfurt. A prominent Nazi hunter pressed Austria to hand over Asner for trial.

Asner is on the Simon Wiesenthal Centre's list of top Nazi war criminals that have avoided justice. As Ustasha police chief in Pozega during World War II, he orchestrated the destruction of the town's Serb, Jewish and Gypsy communities, the centre said.

In a Sun interview published Tuesday, Asner denied wrongdoing and said he wants to prove his innocence.

"I would welcome the chance to answer these accusations in a Croatian court. I don't have anything to do with it. I did not have enough responsibility to order deportation," the daily quoted him as saying.

While extradition is illegal as long as the courts rule Asner unfit to stand trial, "nobody is keeping him from driving to Croatia and surrendering to authorities there," said a state court spokesman in Klagenfurt, Manfred Herrnhofer.

He compared Austrian justice favourably with the US jail at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where only a few of the detained terrorism suspects have faced trial.

"Austria is not Guantanamo. In Austria, we have the rule of law," Herrnhofer told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. "I have sympathy for the victims' feelings, but we have to follow the law."

Croatia has charged Asner with helping deport Jews, Gypsies and Serbs to concentration camps while serving in the police of the fascist Ustasha regime, Croatia's Nazi puppet state during World War II.

The Sun's images "make it abundantly clear that Asner is in good health, lucid and able to get around on his own," Efraim Zuroff, the Wiesenthal Centre's top Nazi hunter, said in a letter Monday to Austrian Justice Minister Maria Berger.

In the Sun interview, Asner denied sending anyone to the notorious Ustasha concentration camp at Jasenovac.

"I don't know of anyone deported from Pozega. Nobody was murdered. I never heard of one single family murdered in Pozega," he was quoted as saying.

Asner left former Yugoslavia after Tito's communist partisans emerged victorious at the end of World War II.

He was granted Austrian citizenship in 1946 and returned to Croatia in 1991 after its nationalist leaders declared independence from Yugoslavia. In 2004, he returned to Austria.

Klagenfurt is the capital of Carinthia, a southern Austrian state governed by right-wing politician Joerg Haider.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre has accused Austria in the past of dragging its feet in bringing Nazi war crimes suspects to justice.

"There has been a slight improvement in Austria's handling of Nazi war crimes cases, but much remains to be done if your country is to finally disprove its reputation as a paradise for Holocaust perpetrators," Zuroff said in his letter to the justice minister.

Any review of Asner's case is up to the Klagenfurt court, Austrian Justice Ministry spokesman Thomas Geiblinger said.

"The law is clear," he said. "Of course, the situation as such is very unsatisfactory."