Serbs start hunt for accused war criminal Mladic

An elite Serbian police unit has stepped up the search for top war crimes fugitive General Ratko Mladic after government officials, faced with Western pressure, dropped their reluctance and ordered his arrest.

Acting on US and other intelligence tips, the anti-terrorist unit – backed by a team of Western experts – was combing Serbia in an intensive search for the former Bosnian Serb commander indicted by the US war crimes tribunal, a senior security officer said.

“The noose is tightening around Mladic,” the officer said. A senior US diplomat added: “We’re optimistic that Mladic will soon be arrested.”

Mladic and wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic are the two most-wanted suspects sought by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.

Both Mladic and Karadzic were indicted in 1995 with genocide and crimes against humanity for their roles in the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim boys and men at Srebrenica in Bosnia and for the siege of Sarajevo during the 1992-95 war there.

The tribunal’s chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, repeatedly has claimed that Mladic is hiding in Serbia. Karadzic is believed to be hiding in neighbouring Bosnia.

A Serbian security officer said the search for Mladic centred around the town of Valjevo, 40 miles south-west of Belgrade. It is believed that Mladic is using the hilly and thickly-forested region of Serbia to hide.