Posted on 02/21/2006 3:25:30 PM PST by presidio9
Gen. Ratko Mladic, the fugitive Bosnian Serb commander accused of orchestrating Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II, has been located in Serbia and authorities are negotiating his surrender, security officials said Tuesday.
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Mladic, considered the most ruthless commander of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, "has not yet been arrested," one official who is close to the operation to find Mladic told The Associated Press. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not entitled to speak to the media.
Another security official, also demanding anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information and fears of jeopardizing negotiations, confirmed that Mladic's "hiding place has been discovered in recent days."
Both officials refused to specify the exact whereabouts of Mladic's hideout, but the private Beta news agency said the former commander was found on Cer Mountain, some 60 miles west of Belgrade on the border with Bosnia. Beta did not cite its source.
Earlier, the Belgrade-based agency reported that "an operation was in progress to locate" Mladic. It also did not name the source of that information.
Chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte repeatedly has said Mladic is in Serbia and "in the immediate reach of the authorities."
"We have said for the last 10 days that the arrest could take place very quickly," her spokeswoman, Florence Hartmann, said in The Hague, Netherlands.
Serbia is under intense pressure from the European Union and the U.S. to capture Mladic, charged by the war crimes tribunal with genocide for allegedly ordering the massacre of 8,000 Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica and for the 1992-95 siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.
State news agency Tanjug, quoting Bosnian Serb BN television, earlier reported that the 62-year-old Mladic had been arrested and was "being transported" to the U.S.-run air force base in Tuzla, eastern Bosnia. Mladic was to be flown to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the report said.
But Srdjan Djuric, spokesman for Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, told the AP in a statement that Mladic had not been arrested. He called the Tanjug report a "manipulation" meant to derail the government's efforts to detain him.
The contradicting reports on Mladic started with Kostunica's senior aide, Vladeta Jankovic, predicting earlier Tuesday that Mladic's arrest was imminent.
"Those who are searching have all means and are in full swing" in efforts to capture Mladic, Jankovic said. He said the government wanted to persuade Mladic to surrender.
"This problem has to be solved, and it will be solved in the shortest possible period," he said.
However, Jankovic said he had no information on whether Mladic's hiding place had been located or whether the government was involved in any negotiations for his surrender.
The conflicting reports caused confusion in Belgrade. There have been numerous incorrect reports in the past that Mladic had been located or captured.
Serbia, seeking to establish closer ties with the European Union and NATO, faces renewed international isolation if it fails to extradite Mladic to the U.N. tribunal in The Hague.
EU officials had given Serbia until the end of February — in a week — to hand Mladic over to The Hague and threatened to freeze EU membership talks otherwise.
Hartmann and officials at the EU and NATO said Tuesday they had no information about Mladic's reported arrest.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said he was not aware Mladic had been arrested or detained.
Mladic, who was head of the Bosnian Serb army during the war, is No. 2 on the tribunal's most-wanted list after Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader who remains at large. Mladic went into hiding in 2002 after Slobodan Milosevic was ousted as president in 2000.
The State Department has offered $5 million for the capture of Mladic, who was known to have made forays into Belgrade even as recently as a few years ago to dine and to watch soccer games.
Under an indictment last amended in October 2002, the U.N. war crimes tribunal charged the general with 15 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in 1992-95. If convicted, Mladic faces life imprisonment, the tribunal's maximum punishment. The U.N. court has no death penalty.
An estimated 200,000 people died during the Bosnian war and half the country's prewar population of 4 million were displaced.
I don't envy you for your job...
Thanks for doing it anyhow.
I never bet on Islam. I know there were Serb atrocities but the way we sided with the Muslims was a crime. Ratko Mladic should be running the UN. Kick Kofi out and put in Ratso
After all your posts all these years I must say you are a clueless idiot when it comes to Islam. You don't see a clash of civilizations but I do. Islam is unlike any other religion we have these days. I used to defer to you because you are military, but no more. You could slip on a suit and be very happy at EU HQ as an apparatchik
I think you are missing some details about this guy ... he was just to stupid or unfortunate - otherwise he would be lined up together with Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Ghengis Khan in the history books.
The UN made disaterous mistakes on the balkans and I bet some parts of it are corrupt - certainly it's not half as efficient as it should be. But we didn't side with muslims.
We just prevented 1 Million people to be burried in Kosovo. I can't tell you how many of them innocent but clearly more then just half of them.
maybe his attitude formed because he was there doing something and getting hands on informations rather then sitting in his armchair and demanding a world-religion to be wiped out.
Don't do that.
k
Total hysterical lie from you. How many deaths do you attribute to Milosovic compared to the others?
You can thank General Ratko Mladic for that.
At the beginning we tried to have a even handed approach to all the side in what was a multi sided civil war.
It was the massacre and it was a massacre that opinion really went anti Serb and the US gave support to the Croatian operation that finally defeated the Bosnian Serb Army.
The Serbs were not innocent in Kosovo they carried out acts of brutality as well as the KLA but by then the Serb nation had a bad name for itself.
The break up good have happened a lot better than using the Serb Army and various Serbian paramilitaries to grab as much land as possible from the other provinces
As in all the other Balkan conflicts stretching right back in time there were no real losers or winners in this war just victims, opportunists and monsters on all sides.
Thanks dennisw insults will get you anywhere.
I think you have the apparatchik mentality as you divide the world into four legs good two legs bad.
I prefer to look on people as a whole.
I never trust people who use flowery terms like a clash of civilizations, flowery speech is just that flowery.
"The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo.We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early '90s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary. When they achieve independence with the help of our tax dollars combined with those of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this sends to other terrorist-supported independence movements around the world. Funny how we just keep digging the hole deeper!"—Maj-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie
well it still could be a lie. Certainly not from me but from the US state officials and from the spokesmen of the EU and UN and I may say that it was not a hysterical one definatly.
How many deaths can be attributed to Milosevic... well I guess not to many directly - but on his orders: More then you need to be famous.
Well in the end he just wouldn't listen to the US and to Europe... I hope Ahmedinedjad is paying attention to this part of histroy.
they have not played us - they where about to be slaughtered. If that's playing - what's beeing serious then ?
When you said a few weeks ago that Turkey should be in the EU that finished it for me. You are just a fool. All the French car burning riots have not registered with you. The crazy Muslim riots over cartoons have not registered with you. Goodbye. I no longer consider you a serious commentator.See ya later. Much much later.
Islam versus Christians and Europeans is a no-brainer. I know here I stand and it's always always always against Islam and against Jihad. My Jewish people in Israel have had to deal with total disconnect psychos for years. I know what the score is. Other can afford to stick their heads in the sand and get all pious and righteous and ecumenical about Islam. I can't.
But forget me. Any European who "explains" Islam is signing the dhimmi papers for his children and grandchildren. Kosovo was just the start.
Can you my comment on Turkey please
As a jew you don't have much choice but to fight and be ready to do so.
But there are different cultural entities where christs and muslims live together in perfect harmony - unless you flirt with the girl of hassan in which case he will start jihad on you.
Where I live we have a large jewish community and an area of the city where many muslims live. Well these are people and some of them just can't behave but still there where no riots clashes or anything. No major drama through all these years. Imagine that.
In fact I am not pro Turkish although like many I did see them as a important part of Nato in the southern flank and a potential ally in the WOT and they were good friends of Israel.
But there currently they are not the best of allies and I have registered my disgust on the film they have produced on Iraq with Jewish doctors selling Iraqi body parts for money is as sick as anything the Nazis produced.
Re-read the statement. They set-up the situation and got us to give to the Muhammedans what they could not steal for themselves.
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