Mladic in Serb borders - leader
BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro -- War crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic is believed to be holed up in the border regions of Serbia and Bosnia, Serbia's pro-Western president is reported to have said.
Boris Tadic said Friday he believed police were searching for the Bosnian Serb wartime commander, who -- like his former political master Radovan Karadzic -- is indicted by the U.N. war crimes court for genocide.
"I trust police and military reports that I am getting today: that Mladic is somewhere between Bosnia and Serbia," Reuters quoted Tadic as telling daily Vecernje Novosti in one of his first newspaper interviews since he took office last month.
Both Serbia and neighboring Bosnia have come under intense international pressure to find and hand over Mladic, Karadzic and other key figures accused of atrocities during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Karadzic and Mladic are charged with being the masterminds behind the Srebrenica massacre of 1995, in which Serb militias rounded up and killed about 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
Tadic, who has pledged that Mladic would be handed over if captured in Serbia, warned that failure to cooperate with the U.N. court would isolate Serbia internationally.
Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell urged Bosnians to enact reforms and to arrest former Bosnian Serb leaders.
"I won't be happy until I see Mr. Karadzic and others standing before the bar of justice.," Powell said. "I know the hunt continues." (Full story)
Western officials also say Belgrade stands no chance of building closer ties with the European Union and NATO without bringing Mladic and other fugitives to justice. But the issue is politically sensitive as many Serbs see the court as biased.
"Of course, we can decide not to cooperate with The Hague tribunal but we have to be aware that the consequences would be catastrophic," Tadic told the paper.
But despite sitting on Serbia's top military body, Tadic's powers are limited. Analysts say any decision to arrest key indictees would probably be taken by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, a critic of The Hague.
In June, the U.N. High Representative to Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, sacked 60 high-level Serb officials because they failed to arrest suspected war criminals, calling their lack of action a "sustained, long-term, gross refusal."
Ashdown told CNN the officials were required to apprehend the suspects under the 1995 Dayton accords that ended the war in Bosnia.
"A very small bunch of corrupt politicians believe that allowing Radovan Karadzic to stay at liberty is more important than this country having a future in NATO and peace for its citizens," Ashdown said.
