Mladic 'negotiating surrender'

General Ratko Mladic has been charged with genocide.

BELGRADE - Top war crimes fugitive General Ratko Mladic is in talks with Serbian security services over a negotiated surrender, according to a senior Serbian police expert.

Former Belgrade police chief Marko Nicovic told Montenegrin news agency Mina that the wartime Bosnian Serb military leader was driving a hard bargain and insisting on financial security for his helpers and family and amnesty for those who sheltered him.

No one in the Government was available for comment.

Belgrade is under intensified pressure to hand over the remaining war crimes fugitives, including Mladic and his wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic or be halted on its paths to the European Union and Nato.

Nicovic said it was crucial for the Government that Mladic surrenders and is not arrested because in the latter event police or guards could be hurt and this could affect the Government's rating.

"The topic of negotiations is certainly also what the general will say in The Hague," Mina quoted Nicovic as saying. He explained Mladic knew all about the former Yugoslav Army's involvement in the Balkan wars.

The report comes days after Serbia's war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic said the authorities were on to a number of people who were in contact with war crimes indictees and warned them they would be criminally prosecuted if they continued to help runaways in any way.

The wartime Bosnian Serb leader and his military commander have been charged with genocide for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8000 Muslims and the siege of Sarajevo, which claimed more than 10,000 lives during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia.

Serbian Interior Minister Dragan Jocic said that arresting the remaining fugitives was the priority of the police, as well as the state and military intelligence services.

Six United Nations war crimes indictees are still at large, all of them Serbians or Bosnian Serbs, including Karadzic and Mladic.

Serbia has delivered 13 war crimes suspects to the tribunal in the past year, with the last suspect handed over in April and a number of Western officials have told Serbia they wanted to see some action and not just promises.

- INDEPENDENT