Eurasia Press & News
Serbia plans to offer EUR 10 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the Balkans’ most wanted war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic, an official said Thursday.
Earlier this week, European Union foreign ministers agreed to ask the bloc’s executive commission for an opinion on launching entry talks with Serbia, a procedural step in the long accession process and one they had withheld in recent months.
But to progress further, the country still has to arrest Mladic, indicted by the UN war crimes court for genocide in the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica and the 1992-95 siege of Sarajevo.
The new reward, to be announced later Thursday, would mark a tenfold increase over the previous inducement.
“This is a part of our efforts to nab the man. We will gladly pay that money as Mladic is an outstanding condition for the success of our European Union bid,” a government official told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
He said the reward for another fugitive, Goran Hadzic, would be raised from 350,000 to EUR 500,000.
