Serbia has will to arrest Mladic: del Ponte

BELGRADE (Reuters) – Serbia is finally showing the
political will to arrest Bosnian Serb fugitive Ratko Mladic
after years of delays and false starts, the chief prosecutor of
the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague said on Saturday.

Carla del Ponte has been calling for Mladic’s handover
since her court indicted him in 1995 on two counts of genocide
for his role in the 1992-95 Bosnia war. She told the Serbian
daily Vecernje Novosti that Belgrade had been dithering for
years.

“I personally think that Serbian authorities were not
searching for Mladic to arrest him but to have him surrender,”
del Ponte told Novosti in an interview. “They were trying to
disable his helpers and send him the message he should
surrender.”

The Serbian government shies away from talk of arresting
Mladic, using instead the term “cooperation with The Hague.” It
is an open secret in Belgrade that officials long hoped to
persuade him to surrender to avoid public ire at the
humiliation of a man many Serbs see as a hero.

But there are signs that attitude is giving way to more
pragmatic political calculations.

In May, the European Union took del Ponte’s advice and
froze talks on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, a
first step toward EU membership, citing Serbia’s failure to
hand over the former general.

Facing pariah status, Serbia presented EU officials with an
“action plan” for Mladic’s arrest earlier this month, hoping
that a serious show of effort would placate del Ponte and
persuade the EU to restart talks.

“Since the action plan was adopted, I think the political
will to arrest Mladic exists for the first time,” del Ponte
said. “I would like to see the operational plan and be
involved.”

She said she was still “grateful” to Brussels for putting
pressure on Serbia by freezing the talks. “I hope the EU will
keep that condition — no resuming talks without full
cooperation with us, which means Mladic in The Hague.”

The plan has not been made public but it is said to include
a media campaign to convince Serbs that it is necessary to
arrest Mladic, who is accused of orchestrating the siege of
Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims.

A government survey published on Thursday showed 51 percent
of those polled opposed Mladic’s extradition, 34 percent
supported it and 15 percent were undecided.