The chief of Serbia's council for cooperation with the United Nations war crimes tribunal says efforts to locate and arrest former Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladić are intensifying.

Rasim Ljajić told local daily Večernje Novosti that the search for Mladić has "never been more serious and all-inclusive", adding that it would continue to intensify until the fugitive is apprehended.

He said that operations such as the raid of a factory in Valjevo, about 100 kilometres southwest of the Serbian capital Belgrade, in mid-November would continue, in an effort to not only locate Mladić but to cut off all financial and logistical support being provided to him by allies within Serbia.
 
The chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY, Serge Brammertz, is expected to submit a report on Serbia's co-operation with the court to the UN Security Council next month.
 
Ljajić said that he believes that Brammertz's report will be "neither positive nor negative", but added that he hopes that the prosecutor will "confirm that the political will for completing co-operation exists in Serbia, after being convinced of it by the serious actions we are carrying out". These were outlined to him during Brammertz's visit to Belgrade last week.
 
The completion of co-operation with the Hague-based War Crimes Tribunal stands as a giant obstacle in Serbia's road to European integration, with powerful European Union member states such as The Netherlands insisting that all remaining fugitives be brought to justice before Serbia is allowed to apply to become a candidate for EU membership.
 
Mladić stands accused of genocide, including the murder of up to 8000 Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians in Srebrenica during the 1992-95 war, while Serbia's other remaining fugitive, former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadžić, faces 14 counts of war crimes allegedly committed against Croatian civilians between 1991 and 1993.

Source: Balkan Insight