Eurasia Press & News
Hague Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz will visit Belgrade in late March to speak with Serbian officials, said his spokeswoman Olga Kavran.
At a regular Tribunal press conference, Kavran said that this would be a regular, working visit, during which the chief prosecutor would be meeting Serbian officials responsible for cooperation with the tribunal, but could not at this point give an exact date of the visit. The President of National Council for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal Rasim Ljajic said earlier that Brammertz would be visiting on either March 26 or 27.
The prosecutor is due to give his next evaluation of Serbia’s cooperation with the Tribunal in June at a regular session of the UN Security Council in New York. Brammertz’s last report in December 2008 stated that cooperation was not yet complete, despite the significant progress made with the arrest of Radovan Karadzic. The European Union, at Holland’s insistence, demands the extradition of Ratko Mladic before the Stabilization and Association Agreement between Serbia and the EU can be unblocked.
War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic told local radio station ”B92” that he believes that Ratko Mladić will be arrested this year, but that “no one can say when and where”.
Certain media have quoted Vukcevic’s statement that he believes that the most wanted Hague fugitive is most probably hiding somewhere in Belgrade, but Prosecution spokesman Bruno Vekaric explained that this is just one of several possible theories. He added that the prosecutor was speaking about Karadzic’s arrest in Belgrade and that he said that Belgrade was a jungle where a Hague fugitive could easily hide. ”No one knows exactly where Ratko Mladić is. As if they did, he would have been immediately arrested and sent to the Hague,” Vekaric said.
The Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic will meet in Brussels today with EU Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn and other EU officials, with whom he will be discussing burning issues relating to war crimes and their processing.
