Mladic 'cornered'

The European Union called on Serbia yesterday to hand over war crimes fugitive general Ratko Mladic, warning it could suspend talks with Belgrade on closer ties if he was not brought to justice.

The repeat warning from Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn coincided with reports in Serbia that Mladic was cornered and under pressure to surrender to the UN tribunal in The Hague before EU foreign ministers assess the situation next Monday.

"Full cooperation (with the tribunal) should lead to the arrest and transfer of Ratko Mladic," Rehn told the European Parliament in Brussels. "Negotiations should be suspended if the Commission judges that Serbia and Montenegro at any time does not satisfactorily address this."

Serbia again denied that the 63-year old genocide suspect, alleged to have enjoyed high-level protection for years, had been arrested, or that authorities were negotiating a surrender but feared a shootout with his bodyguards or his suicide.

"In the name of the government, I want to tell you that Ratko Mladic has not been located, we are not negotiating with him and he has not been arrested," Education Minister Slobodan Vuksanovic said at the weekly government news conference.

Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot also denied a Dutch report that Serb officials told him they were negotiating with Mladic. He clarified that Serb authorities said there was a rumour Mladic was sick and might be disposed to negotiate a surrender.

Suspension of the EU talks would play into the hands of hardline nationalists who want to damage ties with the west, said Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic.

Mladic was indicted in 1995 along with his political boss Radovan Karadzic for the siege of Sarajevo, which claimed 12,000 lives, and for the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim males.

After the end of the 1992-95 Bosnia war he moved to Serbia. He lived discreetly in Belgrade until the fall of strongman Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, when he went underground.

The Belgrade daily Kurir said he and four bodyguards were "trapped" in a Belgrade apartment by a special police team. An assault could be ordered sometime during the day. Mladic, 63, had no intention of going quietly, it said.