Serbia Offers to Arrest Hadzic Instead of Mladic

There were negotiations with some members of the EU to unblock Serbia’s Stabilisation and Accession Agreement if it extradited Hadzic.

The Serbian authorities offered the European Union to extradite war crimes indictees Goran Hadzic instead of Ratko Mladic so Serbia could continue its European negotiations, Belgrade’s Vecernje novosti daily reported. Although the Serbian authorities still have not found the former Croat Serb leader, they offered to extradite him to the Hague0’s war crimes tribunal, on condition that the extradition of Ratko Mladic no longer be the condition for the Stabilisation and Accession Agreement (SAA). 

- There were negotiations with certain members of the EU to have Serbia’s SAA unblocked if we extradite Hadzic to The Hague, but, unfortunately, the negotiations yielded no results – a source told the daily.

The Serbian political leadership tried to strike a deal through EU members whose support Serbia enjoys, but it all fell through because the European partners did not manage to convince The Netherlands to agree to the deal.

- The Netherlands said that Hadzic’s arrest would not be enough and that it would not concede until Mladic is extradited – sources for the daily said. Because of speculations about the deal, the question arose whether this meant that Serbian intelligence services were closer to arresting Hadzic than Mladic, which the daily’s sources are denying.

- We are not closer to Hadzic, but there is an estimate that his arrest would definitely cause less harm to the security of the country, taking into consideration the negative attitude of the public after verdicts against the former state and military leaders – the sources said, adding that the security services are, alongside their search for Mladic, doing everything to locate Hadzic as well.