Serbia Closer to Fugitive General Mladic

In an interview in Belgrade daily Blic, Serbian Defence Minister Dragan Sutanovac called on Mladic and Hadzic to surrender.

Serbia has stepped up its pursuit of fugitive Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic whose arrest is crucial to the country's European Union bid, a senior Serbian official said on Wednesday.

The arrest of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic two weeks ago left just two fugitives from the 1990s Balkan wars -- Mladic and Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic -- on the run.

Their arrest is critical for Serbia's progress towards European Union membership, which the current government has set as a main goal.

Rasim Ljajic, Serbia's point man for cooperation with The Hague war crimes tribunal, said his government has recently pursued many avenues in its search for Mladic. "We kept them secret," Ljajic said in an interview to Vecernje Novosti daily.

"No one can hide forever. One mistake Karadzic made was enough to lead to his arrest," he said adding the surrender of the remaining two fugitives "would be the best for the country".

The police in the Serb region of Bosnia, Serb Republic, said on Wednesday they were continuing their activities to break up the network supporting war crimes fugitives, including Mladic.

"The regular exchange of information is under way between security agencies on finding and arresting Ratko Mladic," police director Uros Pena Pena told a news conference in Banja Luka.

"These activities will continue until Mladic is arrested or surrendered."

Both, Karadzic and Mladic, who led the Bosnian Serbs during the 1992-95 war, are indicted for the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo. Hadzic is indicted for war crimes during the 1991-95 war in Croatia.

According to the Serbian intelligence reports Mladic had been using Serb army premises until mid-2002 and stayed in various apartments in capital's district New Belgrade until 2006.

In an interview in Belgrade daily Blic, Serbian Defence Minister Dragan Sutanovac called on Mladic and Hadzic to surrender.

"The whole country remains their hostage. They have either to surrender or to be arrested very soon to allow the country and its citizens to have the status they deserve," he said.

Serbia had hoped the July 21 arrest of Karadzic, who spent 11 years on the run, would unfreeze the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA), signed in April as the first step towards EU membership.

However, the 27-nation bloc said it would wait for U.N. war crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz to report on whether Serbia was fully cooperating with the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague before it decides to go ahead with Serbia's EU bid.

Serbia's government fell in March over whether the country should pursue its EU path despite the bloc's backing of the independence of Kosovo.

Nationalists, who vowed to cool ties with the EU until countries in the bloc revoked their decision to recognise Kosovo, lost the elections to a coalition of pro-Western parties and Socialists of the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic.