Serbian officials receive death threats

Letters with the threats were sent to Serbian President Boris Tadic, prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic and minister Rasim Ljajic.

Serbian President Boris Tadic and two other top officials have received fresh death threats over their pledge to arrest the most wanted fugitive from a UN war crimes court, private radio B92 reported Sunday.

Letters with the threats were sent to Tadic, prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic and minister Rasim Ljajic, the two heads of Serbia's team in charge of locating and arresting war crime suspects, the report said.

"The letters were sent from the United States and it is believed that they were written by same people who had sent similar threats in previous years," B92 said.

The prosecutor's office has so far received 66 letters of that kind, B92 quoted Vukcevic's spokesman Bruno Vekaric as saying.

Beside the ones from the United States, some recently sent threats were received from the region, notably Montenegro, Vekaric said.

Last year the Federal Bureau of Investigation launched a probe into several US citizens of Serbian origin suspected of having sent death threats to Vukcevic.

Most wanted fugitive Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime military chief who faces genocide charges over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys, is believed to be hiding in Serbia.

Another remaining fugitive is Goran Hadzic, wanted in connection with atrocities committed by Serb forces during Croatia's 1991-1995 war of independence.

Most Serbs consider the war crimes court in The Hague biased and anti-Serb.

Serbia is under strong pressure from the international community to arrest and deliver the war crimes suspects as part of its bid to join the European Union.