Serbian President Boris Tadic has announced the arrest of longtime war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, the former commander of Bosnian Serb forces in the fighting that took place after the breakup of Yugoslavia.
President Tadic called an urgent news conference Thursday after word emerged that a man believed to be Mladic had been arrested. Tadic announced the 69-year-old Mladic, accused of masterminding the massacre of thousands of men and boys in the Bosnian town of Srebenic, had been arrested on Serbian soil and that an extradition process is under way.
Tadic said Serbia has now closed one chapter in its recent history that will bring the country a step closer to full reconciliation. He also said there will be an investigation into why it took so long - 15 years - to apprehend the former commander.
Mladic is wanted by the United Nations tribunal on war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.
The court, based in The Hague, Netherlands, indicted Mladic in 1995 for atrocities committed during the three-year siege of the Bosnian city of Sarajevo, and the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian men and boys near the city of Srebrenica.
Last week, the chief prosecutor for the U.N. war crimes tribunal, Serge Brammertz, said Serbia had not done enough to capture Mladic or another top fugitive suspect, Croatian Serb Goran Hadzic.
European Union officials have made delivering Mladic a key condition for granting Serbia EU-candidate status.(source:voanews.com)
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