Serbia to deliver Mladic this month: del Ponte aide

By Alexandra Hudson

THE HAGUE (Reuters) – Serbia has assured U.N. chief
prosecutor Carla del Ponte it will deliver former Bosnian Serb
military chief Ratko Mladic to The Hague tribunal by the end of
April, Del Ponte’s spokesman said on Thursday.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica told Del Ponte
during a visit to Belgrade last week that the former Bosnian
Serb military commander indicted for genocide would be handed
over to The Hague this month, her acting spokesman said.

The arrest and handover of Mladic, indicted twice for
genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnia war, is a major condition for
closer ties between Serbia and the European Union.

“We received clear assurances from Kostunica for the
delivery of Ratko Mladic by the end of April,” the spokesman,
Anton Nikiforov, told reporters in The Hague.

Belgrade had also made the same pledge to EU Enlargement
Commissioner Olli Rehn, he said.

The promise was sufficient for the EU to allow association
talks with Belgrade to go ahead this week, but EU officials
told Serbia on Wednesday that further progress on closer ties
with the bloc would depend on the arrest of Mladic.

Belgrade has said it is doing all it can to deliver Mladic,
and there is constant speculation in Serbian media that he is
considering surrender or is ready to die to avoid arrest.

“You can see there were some things happening in Belgrade
but we have no concrete information as to what is being done,”
Nikiforov said, without disclosing further details.

Del Ponte has said the death of former Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic last month before a verdict in his war
crimes trial has made arresting Mladic all the more urgent,
even though the death briefly rallied hardline Serbian
nationalists.

PRESSURE ON MLADIC FAMILY

The EU agreed last October to open talks with Belgrade on
the road toward membership, rewarding Serbia for delivering a
dozen lesser war crimes fugitives to the Hague.

Del Ponte says Mladic is hiding in Serbia with help from
hardliners in the army and intelligence service.

Mladic commanded Bosnian Serb forces and is indicted for
genocide along with his political boss, Radovan Karadzic, for
the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims and the long
siege of Sarajevo in which more than 10,000 civilians were
killed.

The opposition ultranationalist Radical Party, Serbia’s
largest, accused the Serbian government on Wednesday of
persecuting Mladic’s family and called for a walkout from the
assembly as a protest against the “brutal beatings and
arrests.”

Mladic’s wife was quoted by a Belgrade newspaper on
Thursday as saying four close relatives had been detained.

“I am in shock, I can’t believe the pressure put on us,”
Bosa Mladic told Kurir daily.

“They arrested my brothers Miroslav and Vukasin Jedic and
my relatives Krsto and Branislav Jedic,” she said, adding that
financial police had also checked the firm of her son Darko.

She said she knew nothing of her husband’s whereabouts or
his plans. “Who knows where my husband is, no one knows that,”
she told Kurir.

(Additional reporting by Beti Bilandzic in Belgrade)