The Serbian government gave its clearest indication this week that it is seeking the surrender of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army commander wanted for orchestrating the killing of at least 7,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995.
For the first time, government officials on Tuesday confirmed that they have sought contact with the secret support network that has helped to keep the former general in hiding for at least eight years.
Their hope is to secure his voluntary surrender to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, as with the 14 other Serb war crimes suspects that have been sent to the court from Serbia this year.
victory
If Serbia succeeds in transferring Mladic to The Hague, it will mark a substantial victory for the moderate nationalist Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, who has refused to adopt a policy of openly arresting war crimes suspects.
Speculation has intensified over the last two weeks as the 10th anniversary of the fall of Srebrenica, on July 11, 1995, approaches, but the government has denied that it is conducting negotiations.
However, in an interview, Serbia's chief government spokesman, Srdjan Djuric, conceded that efforts were being made to reach members of the Mladic support network to secure a possible surrender.
"Considering how highly sensitive this is, the Serbian government does not announce results before they have happened," Djuric said. "Any detail could jeopardize the whole process."
A senior US official in Washington said he had learned from Serbian officials that they contacted supporters of Mladic after a videotape appeared earlier this month showing paramilitaries from Serbia executing six Bosnian Muslim prisoners from Srebrenica.
"There is a lot of very detailed work on it," said the US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to be perceived as speaking for officials in Belgrade.
Serbian officials said they have been pressuring the general's supporters to reveal his whereabouts, or to convince him to surrender, the official said.
For most of the last decade Mladic has been hiding in Serbia and has spent most of his time on military bases, Serbian officials say. Serbian officials recently told the US official that for the last year Mladic has been sheltered by a shadowy network of military and civilian supporters, the same tactic used by the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic, in Bosnia, who is also wanted by the Hague tribunal.
Diplomats and government officials in Belgrade said that the most recent sighting of Mladic was in May 2003, at a Serbian army barracks.
It is not known whether Mladic is still in Serbia.
support networks
The leading Serbian human rights advocate, Natasha Kandic, whose Humanitarian Law Center monitors war crimes cases, said Mladic has two support networks, one consisting of former members of the Yugoslav military intelligence service and the other of Bosnian Serbs.
US officials have been telling Serbia's leaders since 2002 that Serbia is responsible for Mladic's surrender and their country will "never be allowed" join NATO as long as the fugitive general remains free, Nicholas Burns, the US undersecretary of state for political affairs, said in a telephone interview from Washington.
"Our view is they want to find him for the first time in 10 years," Burns said.
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