The chief war crimes prosecutor in Serbia, Vladimir Vukcevic, expects genocide suspect Ratko Mladic to be arrested this year due to progress in the hunt, he said in an interview published on Tuesday.
”We expect it,” Vukcevic told the newspaper Vecernje Novosti in answer to a question on whether Mladic would be tracked down and sent to the United Nations war crimes tribunal by the end of the year.
”[We] are working persistently every day on achieving the final goal of locating, arresting and handing over Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic to the tribunal,” he was quoted as saying.
Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army chief, is indicted for genocide notably for carrying out the Srebrenica massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys near the end of the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia.
Hadzic, the only other remaining fugitive of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, is wanted for war crimes by Serbs he led in Croatia’s 1991-1995 independence war.
Asked if any progress had been made in locating Mladic, who is widely thought to be hiding in Serbia, Vukcevic said: ”The political will exists … as well as proper coordination of all state agencies” engaged in the hunt.
”We realise that each day that passes [with Mladic still at large] is a great loss for Serbia,” Vukcevic said in reference to the country’s stalled bid to join the European Union.
Serbia’s pro-European government hopes to join the EU by 2014.
The former Yugoslav republic has signed a trade and aid pact with the 27-nation bloc seen as the first step to membership, but EU member The Netherlands has vetoed its application, insisting Mladic first be arrested.
Officials in Belgrade have repeatedly expressed confidence of catching Mladic by the end of 2009, without ever elaborating.
Mladic, whom the UN court indicted in 1995, has managed to evade capture even though democratic forces have been in power in Serbia for almost nine years since the ouster of late wartime president Slobodan Milosevic. — AFP
