EU to press Serbia over failure to arrest Mladic

European Union foreign ministers were to press Serbia today to live up to international demands it hunt down and hand over top war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic to the UN war crimes tribunal.

Serbia’s prime minister Vojislav Kostunica will also be questioned over his nation’s draft constitution, which has raised concerns within the EU because it declares independence-seeking Kosovo an integral part of Serb territory.

European officials in Luxembourg said Belgrade’s position on Kosovo was seen as provocative and if passed could scuttle UN led talks on the future status of the Serb province.

Status talks, led by former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, started early this year, but have yet to produce results, with the ethnic Albanians demanding independence from Serbia and Belgrade offering broad autonomy but no independence. Kosovo has been run by the United Nations and Nato since a 1999 war.

The EU foreign ministers were to receive the latest report from the UN chief prosecutor for ex-Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, on whether Belgrade was doing enough to find Mladic.

The 25-nation bloc has suspended negotiations with Serbia on a new aid-and-trade deal until it can prove it is fully co-operating with the UN war crimes tribunal. Del Ponte’s latest update to the EU is not expected to be encouraging.

After a visit to Belgrade earlier this month she said that officials there were still not doing enough to capture Mladic, but expressed hope the hunt for the fugitive, sought by the UN court on genocide and other war crimes charges, would improve in the next few weeks.

Mladic has evaded justice since his 1995 indictment for the massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica during the war in neighbouring Bosnia.

He is believed by UN prosecutors to be hiding in Serbia with the help of hard-liners in the police and military, but also a litter of Serb loyalists.