Serbia has stepped up efforts to capture war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic by putting into effect a secret government plan to arrest him, the interior minister said today.

The search for UN-wanted war crime suspects General Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic has failed to yield any results, but efforts to find them are continuing, Serbian officials said today.

A Belgrade judge has ordered a key suspect in the Madrid bombings to be detained pending his possible extradition to Spain.

The US embassy in Belgrade apologised today for a road accident that was initially thought to be an assassination attempt on President Boris Tadic.