The issue of national identity is taken seriously by Balkan people – including the least serious among them.
Mladic Surrender 'In Serbia's Interests'
| 06 August 2008 |
Serbia's Defence Minister, Dragan Sutanovac, told the Belgrade daily, Blic, that both Mladic and Goran Hadzic, the two remaining war-crimes fugitives “must soon surrender or be arrested in order for Serbia to honour its own [laws] and international laws and obtain the status its citizens deserve.”
He was joined by the Labour Minister, Rasim Ljajic, also head of the National Council for Cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, who said the two could not “spend a lifetime in hiding.”
Ljajic was referring to the recent arrest of the Bosnian Serb wartime leader, Radovan Karadzic, who was in hiding for 13 years before being apprehended in Belgrade last month.
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The ICTY indicted both Karadzic and his military commander, Mladic, twice for genocide in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. Hadzic, meanwhile, is charged with war crimes committed in Croatia. The arrest and transfer of the duo to The Hague remains a condition for Serbia’s further European integration.
Both men are believed to be hiding in Serbia, although Ljajic insisted Mladic’s whereabouts were unknown. “We're not saying he is not in Serbia, but before a trace leads to him... every claim is just speculation,” he told the Belgrade daily, Vecernje Novosti. "The best solution for Mladic and Hadzic, their families and for the state would be a voluntary surrender,” Ljajic said.
