Mladic to be arrested 'sooner rather than later'

Serbia's foreign minister predicted that fugitive General Ratko Mladic will be apprehended soon and put on trial at the UN war crimes tribunal, putting to rest an ugly legacy of the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime commander, and ex-Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic, are the only remaining major Balkan war crimes fugitives.

"There are 43 indictees out of 45 that are already sent to The Hague," Serbia's foreign minister Vuk Jeremic said at the United Nations.

Ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, considered the intellectual author of Serb aggression, was arrested on July 21 and extradited to The Hague after years of evading NATO forces and internal exile.

Mr Jeremic pledged that his government would "make sure that General Mladic and Hadzic are found and given a chance to defend themselves".

"I hope, and I will suggest that sooner, rather than later, we are going to be able to announce that this chapter is closed, and that there are no more indictees," he said.

He did not offer details of the hunt for Mladic - who was charged with genocide for the three-year Serb siege of Sarajevo and for the slaughter of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica during the 1992-95 Bosnian war - and Hadzic, who was accused of crimes against humanity during Croatia's 1991-95 war for independence.

Serbian President Boris Tadic's government has been criticised by Serb ultra-nationalists who consider Karadzic and Mladic heroes despite their indictments. The government put down riots after Karadzic was apprehended.

Mr Jeremic was at the United Nations to seek support for Serbia's plan to question Kosovo's independence at the International Court of Justice.

Serbia will submit a resolution to the UN General Assembly seeking an opinion from The Hague-based Court about the legality of Kosovo's secession from Serbia on February 17 from Serbia.

He called the move "an ethnically motivated act of secession" by the mainly Albanian Kosovars.

He contrasted Serbia's legal and diplomatic approach to the issue with the current conflict between Russia and Georgia over the future of the breakaway states of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

"We have tried that in the 1990s, we don't want to go down that path again," he said.

Belgrade would need to persuade a majority of UN member states to vote to make such a request to the Court, the UN's principal judicial body.

The Court's opinion would be nonbinding, but Mr Jeremic said Serbia would "accept any opinion that comes from the ICJ", even if it rules that Kosovo's secession was within the law.

Kosovo has won recognition from the United States and most EU countries. Serbia - backed by its ally Russia - has refused to endorse the split.