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Serbia appoints defense minister with shady ties

Serbia-Montenegro's joint assembly on Friday approved a friend of top war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic as the country's new defense minister. Zoran Stankovic, former director of the Belgrade military hospital, was elected with 72 votes in the 126-member assembly. Thirty-two deputies voted against Stankovic and two abstained.

Stankovic's candidacy was put forward by Serbia, the country's larger republic, after an equipment purchase scandal forced the previous minister to resign.

Some analysts believe Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica proposed Stankovic in hopes that he would persuade Mladic to surrender to the Netherlands-based UN war crimes tribunal.

Stankovic, 51, is believed to have close ties to Mladic, a former Bosnian Serb army commander allegedly responsible for Europe's worst carnage since World War II -- the massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995.

Mladic allegedly is hiding in Serbia under protection from the hard-liners in the military.

The hunt for Mladic would continue, but "it is not the job of the defense minister to chase Ratko Mladic all over the mountains," Stankovic said, speaking on B92 television shortly after his appointment. But Stankovic also suggested he would replace the hard-liners in army intelligence believed to have sheltered Mladic in the past -- a move that could lead to his eventual arrest.

EU and other Western officials have demanded Mladic's hand-over by December.
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