Wartime Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic, the last fugitive wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), will "soon be in The Hague", the seat of the tribunal, a minister said Thursday.

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Until now, Serbia has used all its efforts to arrest former Bosnian Serb political and military leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic respectively, Rasim Ljajic, the minister in charge of cooperation with the UN tribunal, said in an interview to Novi magazin weekly.

Karadzic was arrested in July 2008, while Mladic was captured in May.

"I am sure that this case is a lot easier and that he (Hadzic) will soon be in The Hague," Ljajic said.

However, Ljajic insisted he had no information on Hadzic's whereabouts.

Hadzic, 52, who is wanted for war crimes committed during the 1991-1995 war in Croatia, has been in hiding since 2004. Tribunal officials believe he is hiding in Serbia.

"The best option for him and his family is to surrender" to the Serbian authorities, Ljajic said.

Hadzic is the last suspect at large following Mladic's arrest in May.

Mladic, 69, as well as wartime Bosnian Serb president Karadzic, face charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

The charges include the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys -- the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II -- and the 44-month siege of the city of Sarajevo, during which 10,000 were killed.

Source: AFP

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