Mladic is "hiding alone"

09:45 May 05 | B92

BELGRADE -- Serbian Economic Minister Predrag Bubalo said that Ratko Mladic's web of helpers has been cut off.

He said that there were, initially, about 50 people helping Mladic to hide. The number was then cut to ten, and five have since been arrested, according to Bubalo. He said that the Serbian services have been able to reconstruct Mladic's movement from April 2002 to the end of 2005, but have yet to confirm where he he has been hiding during the past several months.



Serbia - "how long do you think you can stay in there, little Ratko?"
Ratko - "i'm not guilty and i'm never coming out! leave me alone!"

However, Bubalo said that the fact that Mladic's web of helpers has been untangled will make it harder to find him.

"Ratko Mladic is now hiding independently, and that is one of the hardest tasks. When a web exists, then someone within the web can make a mistake. This right now is definately a difficult task, like finding a needle in a hay stack." Bubalo said.

He said that after the cooperation crisis with the Hague Tribunal is solved, cooperation will be analysed to see if the administration could have been more effective in finishing these obligations. Bubalo said that he is convinced that Mladic will be extradited to The Hague shortly, and that the Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU will be signed by the end of the year, regardless of the postponement.

The three individuals arrested yesterday under suspicions that they belong to the inner circle of Mladic's helpers are not members of the Serbia-Montenegro military, according to a statement from the Defence Ministry.

Orthodox Churches in Kosovo to Be Protected by Law

4 May 2006 | 15:47 | FOCUS News Agency

Pristina. Orthodox churches and monuments in Kosovo will be protected by law, Kosovo’s President Fatmir Sejdiu told Greek agency ANA-MPA, Macedonian state TV station MTV reports.
The TV station notes that the President spent the Easter holidays in Decani monastery.
Kosovo’s President also paid attention to the issue of the border between Macedonia and Kosovo pointing out it must be solved after the final status of the region is agreed on.



"Its too bad when churches become the victims of man-made wars."

Kosovareport Blog: The Comment Commandos Continue the Conflit

How absolutely fitting and distressing that a relatively harmless kosovo blog would become the virtual battleground for anonymous Albanians and Serbs to come settle their scores in such a sophomoric and broken-English kind of way.



Keyboard Soldiers: "battling it out in the margins!"

see it for yourself here (be sure to look under comments, and watch out for strategically placed obscenities....

EU's Rehn halts SAA talks with Serbia-Montenegro over Mladic

03/05/2006
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The EU has called off talks on closer ties with Serbia-Montenegro because of Belgrade's failure to arrest war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic. EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn made the announcement Wednesday (3 May) after consulting the UN tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte. The deadline set by the EU for Mladic's arrest expired on Sunday. The next round of Stabilisation and Association talks had been scheduled for 11 May.

"It is disappointing that Belgrade has been unable to locate, arrest and transfer Ratko Mladic to the Hague," Rehn said. "The Commission therefore has to call off the negotiations."

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica had pledged that Mladic would be apprehended in April -- a promise that won Serbia-Montenegro a month-long extension from the EU. In a statement Wednesday, he insisted his government had done all it could.

In Podgorica, meanwhile, Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic said Montenegro's EU aspirations were being damaged because of Belgrade's inability to resolve the Mladic case. If the 21 May independence referendum in the republic succeeds, he said, Montenegro will seek to separate its EU bid from Serbia's before the end of this year. (BBC, Politika, Blic, Danas, Independent, EU Politix - 03/05/06; Beta, RTS, Mina, Tanjug - 02/05/06)

reported on SouthEast European Times

Labus: "Only miracle can save Serbia"

By Gilles Castonguay

MILAN (Reuters) - The European Union should suspend talks with Serbia for failing to hand over war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic as promised, the Hague tribunal's chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte said on Tuesday.

Speaking a day ahead of her report to the EU Commission in Brussels on Belgrade's co-operation with the United Nations court, she said she hoped the EU would get tough with the Serbs.

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus, who was in Brussels for meetings on Tuesday, agreed that "only a miracle" could now prevent the EU from suspending the association talks.



"don't you mean only a 'Mladic' could prevent the EU from suspending talks?"

The EU wants wartime Bosnian Serb Army commander Mladic extradited to the Hague tribunal as proof that Serbia will comply with international justice, before advancing its hopes of eventual membership in the 25-member bloc.

Del Ponte declined to say during a visit to Milan what she would tell the commission, but said she hoped it would result in a decision to penalise Belgrade for its failure to deliver.

"I would appreciate it if the EU would strongly support the fact that if Mladic is not delivered the suspension of negotiations will be done," the UN prosecutor said.

Serbia has failed to keep a pledge that Mladic -- alleged to be hiding in the country with the protection of renegade army and intelligence officers -- would be handed over by the end of April. It was the latest of a number of such failures.

MAYBE TOMORROW, MAYBE IN 5 YEARS

Speaking after talks with EU western Balkans director Reinhard Priebe, Labus told reporters his impression was that the formal EU negotiation was, as a result, now just a step from being postponed. The next round is due on May 11.

Labus said Belgrade could not guarantee that Mladic, 64, would be extradited in the next 24 hours, when EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn is due to meet del Ponte then decide on the fate of the Belgrade-Brussels talks.

Rehn wrote in a Serbian newspaper article on Sunday that Serbia should take its place in the EU but if Mladic was not turned over this week, the Commission would have to postpone the talks and put the process on hold until Belgrade co-operates.

Mladic's arrest "can be done in a day, but also in five years", Labus told Belgrade's Radio B92. "Only a miracle in the next 24 hours can save us, and stories that Rehn might change his mind are groundless."

Labus, however, said Priebe told him the EU and not del Ponte would ultimately decide whether or not to suspend talks.

The EU has given Belgrade the benefit of the doubt in the past despite del Ponte's impatience, because it is concerned about the political stability of Serbia, where Mladic enjoys the emotional support of ultranationalists.

Newspaper reports say Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica is confident the suspension of talks would not delay the one-year association agreement process by more than a month.

Del Ponte said she had no fresh word from Serbia on Mladic, who is wanted for genocide in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two, and over 10,000 deaths in the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo.

He has been on the run since 2001 when the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic, his protector, was sent to the Hague.

"We'll see tomorrow if they have detained and arrested him," del Ponte told reporters. "Tomorrow we'll adopt our position on the co-operation with Belgrade."

(c) Reuters 2006. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by caching, framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

This article: http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=657102006

Last updated: 02-May-06 14:09 BST

tagged under balkans,mladic, ICTY

Mladic a no-show | Belgrade keeps quiet on Kosovo demands

I can't help but feel there's a correlation between simultaneous stories today regarding the failure to apprehend Mladic as the final offering of Serb ICTY quasi-repentance and the reluctance of Belgrade's Kosovo negotiation team to offer their "demands" before the May 4th talks resume. Its possible the Kosovo negotiaion team would be hesitant to show their cards before the next face-off regardless, but they are smart to not augment the worldwide censure against Serbia right now for failing to meet the Mladic deadline.



Ratko and Radovan - thank you Serbia may we have another?

Its really a shame that Belgrade didn't get Mladic in time. Its even more of a shame the way the ICTY has been administered on Serbia as a quasi-forced rehabilitation that has elicited social and political responses in Serbia that are so contrary to the ICTY's purposes. It is in this regard that I am most critical of the ICTY, because what it was supposed to do for Serbia is so important. Instead, the ICTY is just devolved into some shriveled, distorted bastardization of what it was initially designed to be, and yet it is still one of the only real tools in the EU's toolbox that gets anything done. Either that or they just like to wave it around and pretend that they're fixing things.

For an excellent commentary on the ills and woes of the ICTY, check out this article by Iagor Rangelov of the London School of Economics.

tagged under balkans,mladic, ICTY

Holbrook: Serbia's choice EU or Kosovo

BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro, May 1 (UPI) -- U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrook says Serbia must decide whether it wants to control Kosovo or become a member of the European Union.

Holbrook, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told Belgrade's private B92 radio-television Monday he cannot speak on behalf of the Bush administration but suggested Serbia should decide between Kosovo and the EU by the end of this year.
He said Kosovo should be independent of Belgrade, but it should guarantee absolute freedom for the Serb minority in 90 percent ethnic-Albanian Kosovo.



... A Bureaucrat & a Gentleman: Holbrooke with Richard Gere ....

"I know that my friends in Serbia will not agree with me, but truth is that Serbia has lost Kosovo," said Holbrook. "It lost it due to the policy of (the late Serbian strongman) Slobodan Milosevic and it is the best for Serbia to recognize this reality," he said.
Holbrook said the presence of the U.S.-led NATO troops in Kosovo would be needed some time after Serbs and ethnic-Albanians reach an agreement on Kosovo's future status.

Serbs and ethnic-Albanians are to meet in a fourth round of talks in Vienna May 4-5.
Kosovo has been under U.N. administration and NATO protection since 1999, when NATO air attacks forced Milosevic's Serbian troops to withdraw from the province to stop human rights abuses against ethnic-Albanians.

Copyright Political Gateway 2006©
Copyright United Press International 2006
original article found here

tagged under serbia, balkans

Another deadline comes and goes

13:24 May 01 | B92.net

THE HAGUE, BELGRADE -- Yet another deadline given by the European Union for the extradition of Ratko Mladic has come and gone.

Serbian Prime Miniser Vojislav Kostunica has failed to make good on his promise to the Hague Tribunal and Brussels that Hague fugitive Ratko Mladic would be arrested and extradited by the end of April. When Serbia-Montenegro was being threatened with the suspension of its discussions with the EU one month ago, the EU's Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn said, after discussions with the Hague's Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, that Serbia has until April 30 to extradite Mladic, and that Kostunica gave him assurances that this would happen.

Now, Brussels is warning that this is the last possible moment for actions and concrete results, and that all further stabilisation and association talks between the EU and Serbia will be ended if nothing is done reagrding this matter. Rehn said that there is no more time left for excuses and that Serbia has been given more than enough time to find Mladic. Serbian officials have yet to give any official statements regarding the end of this deadline and the lack of results.



(much in the spirit of Milosevic, Mladic selfishly holds Serbia hostage
as EU talks come to a halt until his arrest)

Del Ponte will be talking with European senior officials regarding Belgrade's cooperation with the Hague on May 3, after which a decision will be made on the further progress of talks between the EU and Serbia-Montenegro.

B92's Hague correspondant Ljubica Gojgic said that the Tribunal has yet to issue an official statement on the end of the deadline, and has stated that there wil be no public comments made until May 3. Despite the lack of official statements, the disspointment of the Hague officials is evident. One fact that increased the optimism regarding Mladic's arrest in The Hague was that no one from within Prime Minister Kostunica's cabinet denied the announcements that Kostunica had made a promise that Mladic would be extradited by May.

ICTY