Reuters North American News Service, December 6th, 2007
BELGRADE, Dec 6 (Reuters) - Ratko Mladic, the fugitive
Bosnian Serb general wanted for genocide by the U.N. tribunal,
is most likely hiding in Serbia, Serbia's war crimes prosecutor
Vladimir Vukcevic was quoted as saying on Thursday.
Serb authorities say Mladic is not in Serbia, otherwise he
would have been arrested. However, Vukcevic told the newspaper
Blic in an interview that the fugitive military chief, seen as a
hero by hardline nationalists in the country, was within reach.
Referring to meeting on Monday with U.N. chief war crimes
proseuctor Carla del Ponte in Belgrade, Vukcevic said: "I told
the prosecutor that we assume Mladic is in Serbia."
Serbia's path to closer ties with the European Union is
blocked by its failure to arrest four war crimes suspects,
including Mladic, indicted for their role in brutal wars in
Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s.
Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the U.N. tribunal in the
Hague, has asked the EU not to sign a key accord with Serbia
until the fugitives are brought to justice.
"The fact that he's hiding well disturbs our search,"
Vukcevic said. "But I can for sure say that the network of his
supporters is getting smaller."
Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serb
former police chief Stojan Zupljanin and Goran Hadzic, a
Croatian Serb leader, are also under indictments by the Hague
court and remain on the run.
They were hiding either in Serbia or "in the region between
Serbia, the Serb half of Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo",
Vukcevic said. "At this moment we don't know where they are."
Vukcevic said Karadzic had been in Belgrade in 2004.
"I can't say why he was not arrested," he added.
Vukcevic said his team had been trying this year to
negotiate with Zupljanin and Hadzic and arrange a surrender.
"We were in contact with them through mediators, trying to
negotiate surrender," he said. But the negotiations failed, and
locating the fugitives to arrest them proved impossible.
In Bosnia, members of the EU peacekeeping force EUFOR raided
the home of a suspected supporter of Karadzic on Thursday.
EUFOR spokesman David Fielder told Reuters security forces,
supported by NATO and local police, were looking for any
association between Savicic and Karadzic.
EUFOR seized documents for analysis and police removed
ammunition from Savicic's premises in Sokolac, about 20 km (12
miles) southeast of the capital, Sarajevo, he said.
The homes of alleged Karadzic supporters have been raided
dozens of times in the 12 years that the former Bosnian Serb
leader has been on the run.
(Reporting by Ivana Sekularac; additional reporting by Maja
Zuvela in Sarajevo; editing by Ellie Tzortzi and Andrew Dobbie)
(Belgrade Newsroom +381 11 311 43 05)
