Balkan suspects on the run

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia - With the most wanted man now in the hands of the U.N. war crimes tribunal, other suspected leaders connected with the Balkan wars can expect to be hunted down.

Bosnian Serb wartime leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic -- both charged with genocide -- are next on the tribunal's 'most wanted' list.

Former political leader Karadzic is often reported to be in the Serb part of Bosnia, while ex-military commander, Mladic was last said to be in Belgrade although Yugoslav officials insist he is no longer on their territory.

Carla del Ponte, the U.N.'s chief war crimes prosecutor, said: "The fact that they have not been arrested when we are preparing the trial of other members of the Bosnian Serb leadership is scandalous."

A total of 37 people wanted by the tribunal are still at large with 13 of them on secret indictments, officials say.

Four senior politicians were indicted with Milosevic in May 1999 on charges of crime against humanity for mass killings and expulsions during the Kosovo conflict.

They are Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, former Yugoslav deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic, former Serbian interior minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic and former army chief and Yugoslav defence minister Dragoljub Ojdanic.

Milutinovic remains in high office and is guaranteed immunity from prosecution under the constitution unless parliament decides otherwise. Though he has remained in power, Western diplomats speculate he will have to surrender to the tribunal at some time.

Sainovic and Stojiljkovic are members of the Serbian parliament, and the DOS coalition of parties which brought down Milosevic, does not have a majority on its own in that assembly to lift that immunity.

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica retired Ojdanic, the fifth man indicted, from the army in December last year.

Other military leaders include former Colonel Mile Mrksic, former Captain Miroslav Radic and Colonel Veselin Sljivancanin, the three men known as the 'Vukovar Three'.

They have been indicted by the tribunal for the mass killing of 260 unarmed men at a farm near the Croatian city of Vukovar in 1991, when they were members of the Yugoslav army.

Though Mrksic and Radic are believed to have left the army, Sljivancanin is reportedly still in his ranks, working at a military training academy.