“Serbia cooperating fully with Hague”

SERBIA

Serbia is fully cooperating with the Hague and is doing its utmost to bring the last two fugitives before the Hague, says the National Council for Cooperation.

“The government’s position is clear. As soon as Hague fugitives Ratko Mladić and Goran Hadžić are located, if they are in Serbia, they’ll be arrested and extradited to the Tribunal, and no-one need have any doubts about that,” said Dušan Ignjatović, the director of the council bureau.

Ignjatović said that Serbia had thus far met over 99 percent of the Tribunal’s demands linked to supplying documentation and that all requests for access to archives had been approved.

He said that there were currently a number of requests that had yet to be fully processed, which, he said, was due to the difficulty of providing an immediate response to all requests that arrived on a daily basis.

Regarding the Hague’s decision to grant former Republic of Srpska President Biljana Plavšić early release, Ignjatović said that Serbia would do all it could should the Hague seek any assistance linked to the case.

Reiterating that Serbia had launched an initiative for those convicted by the Tribunal to serve their sentences in their home country, Ignjatović said that Belgrade was holding talks with the UN and the Tribunal on the issue and that progress was expected soon.