BELGRADE, June 6, 2007 (AFP) - Chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte on Wednesday praised Serbia's new government, but demanded more concrete action to track down fugitives such as genocide suspect Ratko Mladic.
Del Ponte, who is in Belgrade on a fact-finding mission, indicated she was ready to give the Serbian government a positive report regarding its cooperation with The Hague-based tribunal.
The authorities were serious about cooperating, she said. "I hope that the arrest of Mladic will be very soon," she told journalists after meeting Serbian President Boris Tadic.
Del Ponte has in the past been scathing of Belgrade's failure to capture former Bosnian Serb army chief Mladic and his wartime political leader, Radovan Karadzic.
The UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is still seeking five fugitives following the capture last week of former Bosnian Serb general Zdravko Tolimir.
The top suspects still at large are Mladic and Karadzic, who are wanted on charges of ordering the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys at the wartime Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica.
But nearly 12 years on, despite the ICTY having indicted them on genocide charges, the pair remain at large. The Srebrenica massacre is considered the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.
Mladic, 64, is widely believed to be hiding in Serbia, where many still consider him a hero.
Del Ponte said she was to submit the report to the United Nations Security Council on June 18 based on her four-day visit, during which she has had a series of in-depth meetings with senior political and security leaders.
Brussels is awaiting the report before setting a date for the restart of negotiations with Serbia on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) -- a first step towards eventual EU membership.
"My report to the European Union will explain the positive steps in cooperation and that we need to achieve further cooperation," said the UN prosecutor.
The European Union froze the SAA talks with Serbia just over a year ago because of its failure to cooperate with the tribunal.
In an interview published in Wednesday's edition of The Financial Times, Del Ponted said that she expected the Serbian authorities to arrest and hand Mladic over to the UN court within weeks.
Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who in the past has been lukewarm on the question of arresting remaining Serb suspects still at large, was more recently "explicit about how it (Mladic's arrest) could be done," she said.
The statement echoes similar comments Del Ponte made about Croatia last year, when the EU restarted suspended SAA talks with Zagreb shortly before the arrest of Ante Gotovina, the country's last ICTY fugitive.
Tadic, for his part, said Serbia's new government was determined to arrest fugitives like Mladic.
The new coalition, unlike the previous Kostunica government, includes the president's pro-European Democratic Party.
"Our country is making this effort because of its own future, for reconciliation with our neighbours, and not because of the EU or ICTY," Tadic told a joint press conference with Del Ponte.
"We cannot become a society with European standards if the war crimes suspects remain at large," he stressed.
After Tolimir was handed over to the ICTY on Friday, EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said the European Union would resume SAA talks with Serbia later this month.
Along with Mladic and Karadzic, three other suspects charged with war crimes by the UN tribunal also remain at large. They are Stojan Zupljanin, Goran Hadzic and Vlastimir Djordjevic.
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