Serbia denies Mladic arrested

The Serbian government yesterday denied media reports that top Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive General Ratko Mladic had been arrested, but Bosnian and Serbian sources said he was in custody in Bosnia.

"The news about Ratko Mladic is not correct," government spokesman Srdjan Djuric said. "It is a manipulation which damages the (Serbian) government."

Mr Djuric was speaking to Reuters by telephone. No official statement was issued.

Independent Belgrade broadcaster B92 said that in spite of Mr Djuric's denial, a number of sources had told its reporters that the 63-year-old general was arrested in Serbia then transferred to Tuzla in northeastern Bosnia for a flight to The Hague.

This was the route used to take former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague when he was extradited in 2001 and flown from Belgrade via the US military base Camp Eagle near Tuzla to the Netherlands.

Morning newspapers yesterday speculated that Belgrade would spirit Mladic into Bosnia after his arrest in order to counter charges by the Hague war crimes tribunal that he had been hiding in Serbia for years with government knowledge and army help.

In the afternoon, Serbia's state news agency Tanjug and the main Bosnian Serb agency SRNA said the wartime Bosnian Serb Army commander had been arrested in Belgrade then taken to Tuzla.

Mladic was indicted in 1995 for genocide for the 43-month siege of Sarajevo which claimed 12,000 lives and for orchestrating the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

His political boss Radovan Karadzic, indicted on the same charges, is still at large.

Serbian newspapers have been saying for days that Mladic would be on a plane to The Hague before the end of this month, in time to avert suspension of European Union association talks with Belgrade, which would deal a body blow to the government.

The end of this month is the deadline for a report by EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn to the EU assessing whether Serbia is cooperating fully with the UN tribunal.

Florence Hartmann, spokesman for the UN war crimes prosecutor, said they had no information on the reported arrest. "These are rumours, we cannot comment on something that doesn't exist," she said.

Without confirming the newspaper reports of an imminent arrest, Vladeta Jankovic, adviser to Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, said efforts to find Mladic were "in full swing".