Ratko Mladic, the top UN war crimes fugitive, may be arrested "within a few weeks." Chief prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunal at the Hague, Carla del Ponte, stated that she saw "concrete signs" of the detention and extradition of Mladic. Ms. del Ponte said she had hoped to see Mladic face prosecution before she stepped down from her position in September. Boris Tadic, Serbia's president, confirmed that Serbian leaders were determined to arrest General Mladic.
Mladic was the architect of the massacre at Srebrenica in July 1995. A paramilitary force, known as the Scorpions unit, summarily executed some 8,000 Bosnian men in the UN "safe zone' of Srebrenica. The forces, led by General Mladic, "stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and young, of their personal belongings and identification, and deliberately and methodically killed them solely on the basis of their identity.", according to a press release from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The Srebrenica massacre is the worst such incident committed in Europe since the slaughter of millions of Jews in World War II.
The detention of Mladic is integral to the negotiation of Stabilization and Association Agreement (SSA), the agreement to establish a contractual relationship between Serbia and Montenegro and the European Union. EU officials have stated they will not sign the agreement until Mladic is in custody. A top associate of Mladic, Zdravko Tolimir, was brought to the Hague last week after he was captured near the border with Bosnia. Bosnian nationalists, who view Tolimir as a hero, claim Tolimir was dumped over the border and that his arrest was illegal.
Increased political pressure by EU officials has been the only way to coerce a national reconciliation regarding the atrocities committed in the region.
