Ratko Mladic will be caught if he is hiding in Serbia, its officials said Tuesday, a day after the European Union said the country must bring the war crimes suspect to justice if it wants to join the bloc.

Serbia’s deputy prime minister in charge of EU affairs, Bozidar Djelic, said the former Bosnian Serb army commander must face trial at a U.N. war crimes tribunal if Serbia wants to open EU membership talks in about a year. He said that the government has a goal of getting candidate status by 2012.

The EU agreed Monday to review in detail Serbia’s request to join. But it said entry would ultimately be determined by whether Serbia makes a serious effort to arrest Mladic and another suspect.

Mladic was indicted by the U.N. tribunal in the Hague, Netherlands, in 1995 on genocide charges for the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica and the deadly hail of shells and snipers’ bullets unleashed on the capital of Sarajevo during a 44-month siege by Bosnian Serb forces, the worst carnage in Europe since World War II.

The tribunal’s officials believe Mladic has been hiding in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, under the protection of a few of his hardline wartime comrades. Serbian officials say they have no hard evidence that that Mladic is in Serbia, but if he is, he would be caught.

“Let’s not kid ourselves, we must wrap up that cooperation (with the U.N. court) because every next move will be harder if we do not fulfill that condition,” Djelic said. “We are all aware that the remaining two fugitives must be arrested, sooner the better.”

He noted that neighboring Croatia could not open membership talks until Gen. Ante Gotovina, its top war crimes suspect, was caught in the Canary Islands, Spain, in late 2005.

“Now it depends on us whether we will become EU members in 2016, 2020 or 2025,” Serbian President Boris Tadic told the independent Fonet news agency. “A country which does not respect European values, rights and freedoms cannot become an EU member.”

Human Rights Watch said EU’s commitment to international justice will be measured by its willingness to pressure Serbia to arrest Mladic and the other most wanted fugitive, wartime Croatian Serb rebel leader Goran Hadzic.

The rights group said the EU should use “all upcoming opportunities to press Serbia to cooperate fully” with the U.N. tribunal. It should also actively assist Serbia in arresting the suspects, the rights group said.

“The European Union should not give in to Serbia’s halfhearted cooperation with The Hague,” Kenneth Roth, executive director of HRW, said in a report. “The EU needs to go beyond lip-service to accountability, or the victims of Srebrenica will never get the justice they deserve.”

Serbia’s membership request was filed in December as the EU struggled with a decision on a candidate nation that was party to several wars during the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Monday’s decision by the EU foreign ministers to send Serbia’s application to the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, for a review, brings the Balkan nation closer to one day becoming a member.

The stability of Serbia’s pro-Western government, faced with a deep economic and social crisis, depends both politically and financially on its close ties with the EU and the United States. Opposition nationalists have been pressuring the government to give up its EU membership goals, and turn to its traditional Slavic ally Russia instead.

“The EU wants to give the current government some wind in the back because it has loyally carried out all the orders coming from Brussels and Washington,” said Petar Petkovic, a spokesman for the opposition Democratic Party of Serbia.

By DUSAN STOJANOVIC
October 26, 2010 10:18 AM
Associated Press
Associated Press writer Jovana Gec contributed to this report.

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