Arrest imminent for Serb general Ratko Mladic

Ratko Mladic

BELGRADE - The arrest of Ratko Mladic, the Serb general wanted for the 1995 massacre of 8000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, is thought to be imminent.

This follows a surprising turnaround by Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who called the indicted war criminal "a stone around Serbia's neck".

Kostunica, a conservative nationalist who was a friend of Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serbian President, also indicted over Srebrenica and also on the run, conceded for the first time yesterday that his Government needed to deliver Mladic to the Hague war crimes tribunal to avoid being at a disadvantage in talks on the future of Kosovo.

International negotiations on the hotly disputed Serbian province whose Albanian majority clamours for independence are due to start this month.

"No doubt co-operation with the tribunal will influence the negotiations over [the European Union] stabilisation and association agreement as well as negotiations over Kosovo," Kostunica said.

When pressed over whether his Cabinet would hand over Mladic, Kostunica said: "I am sure it will ... the Government will certainly do everything to accomplish it. That is a stone around Serbia's neck."

The war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has set several deadlines for the general's arrest, which Serbian governments have ignored.

But informed speculation has grown that Serbian security forces, possibly with logistical support from Britain's MI6, may whisk the general to The Hague as soon as today, taking advantage of the tranquillity that grips Serbia on New Year's Day as fun-loving Serbs nurse fierce hangovers.

- INDEPENDENT