We'll arrest Mladic, says Serb president

Serbian president Boris Tadic said a government led by his party would arrest war crimes fugitive General Ratko Mladic after elections this year.

“Mladic must be arrested and extradited to the Hague tribunal, there is no dilemma,” Tadic said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“I think it is more likely that this job will be done after elections”, tentatively planned for December.

Serbia’s pro-Western president said that the current conservative-led government had been “directly responsible” for the failure so far to arrest the wartime Bosnian Serb army commander – the main precondition for the Balkan country to begin the process towards European Union membership.

Tadic said his Democratic Party, “which has the potential to be the leading power in the future government”, could finish the job of arresting the fugitive general who was indicted by the Netherlands-based United Nations war crimes tribunal in 1995 for genocide in the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in an eastern Bosnian enclave.

He said the Democrats, who led the government after Slobodan Milosevic’s removal from power in 2000, but are now in opposition, extradited the late president to The Hague tribunal in 2001.

“In the future, some other … people will be tasked with Mladic’s arrest,” Tadic said. “He will never surrender voluntarily.

“The mere idea that someone is indicted for thousands of deaths of people of other religions and ethnicity, triggers disgust.”

“Mladic has the right to defend his innocence, but he has to do it before the institution in charge, and that is the Hague tribunal. If Mladic does not end up in The Hague, this country’s system of values would be jeopardised.”

Tadic listed a series of “tasks” ahead for the troubled Balkan country, including a referendum later this month on a new constitution, elections and possible decision on the future status of its breakaway Kosovo province.

He warned against hasty decisions on Kosovo’s independence which is likely to emerge as a solution in UN-mediated talks between Serbia and independence-seeking Kosovo Albanians that are meant to conclude by the end of this year.

He said Kosovo’s independence would destabilise the Balkans.

The Balkans “need stability and not a new destabilisation”, Tadic said, referring to a series of ethnic wars in the region in the 1990s.