Serbia Probes Businesses, Hunt For Mladic Backers

Thorough checks of several private enterprises to cut off financing of war crime fugitives are under way.

Serbia's law enforcement agencies have investigated several businesses to try to find the financiers of Ratko Mladic and a second fugitive war crimes suspect whose arrests are key to the country joining the EU.

"Thorough checks of several private enterprises to cut off financing of war crime fugitives are under way. Agents have checked about a dozen companies so far," an Interior Ministry official told Reuters.

On Monday police raided a factory in the Serbian town of Valjevo in the hunt for fugitive general Ratko Mladic.

"This is only the beginning. The (Valjevo) action was aimed at severing financial ties of war crimes fugitives," Vladimir Vukcevic, a special war crimes prosecutor, told the Vecernje Novosti daily.

Serbia must arrest Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military commander during the 1992-95 war, and Goran Hadzic, a former leader of Serbs in Croatia, indicted for his role in the 1991-1995 war, to make any progress in its EU accession bid.

Serbia stepped up the hunt for war crimes suspects ahead of a Nov. 17-18 visit by U.N. chief war crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz to Belgrade. His December report to the U.N. Security Council is key to Serbia's European Union application in 2009.

Mladic was indicted in 1995 on genocide charges for the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and for orchestrating the Srebrenica massacre of about 8,000 Muslims.

In July, Serbia arrested former Bosnian-Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and handed him over to the UN tribunal, hoping it would be enough to secure the start of a pre-membership deal. But the Netherlands opposed.

Vukcevic said the authorities were having difficulties in apprehending Mladic.

In a separate interview with the Politika daily, Rasim Ljajic, Serbia's point man for cooperation with the U.N. war crimes tribunal said that Mladic's support network was small but grew more vigilant after Karadzic's arrest.