Les espoirs d’une arrestation prochaine ou d’une reddition de Ratko Mladic ne menant à rien, la Serbie échappe de peu à la suspension des négociations avec l’UE, écrit Igor Jovanovic dans Transitions Online.
Last week’s flurry of rumors about the imminent arrest or surrender of Bosnian Serb wartime commander Ratko Mladic turned out the way all previous episodes did: General Mladic is still at large, and Serbia has missed yet another deadline toward prospective EU membership.
But just as the Serbian authorities tighten the ring around Mladic, a most-wanted war-crimes indictee, the EU is slowly drawing a circle of isolation around Serbia.
Stopping short of suspending association talks with Serbia, EU foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on 27 February gave Serbia “roughly until the end of March” to “reach full cooperation” with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague.
This is less than the tough deadline for Mladic’s handover advocated by some EU countries and ICTY Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. They had suggested using the next round of talks, scheduled for 4–5 April, as a firm date by which Mladic had to be in The Hague, or else talks would be frozen.
Luxembourg’s foreign minister was quoted by Reuters as saying before the Brussels meeting, “We are not going to give an ultimatum. That is not the right way.”
Mladic is wanted by the ICTY on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, as is the political leader of the Bosnian Serbs during the 1992–1995 war, Radovan Karadzic.
Four Serbs of lesser importance are also still at large. The tribunal hopes to wrap up its work by the end of the decade.
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