UN war crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz on Monday said that the search for Ratko Mladic was not confined to Serbia but insisted that the key to his arrest lies in Belgrade.

"The main working hypothesis is that the solution to his arrest is in Belgrade, but of course operational activities are not only concentrated on Serbia but are logically also into other areas," Brammertz told a press conference after meeting with Serbian war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic.

When pressed about of the whereabouts of Europe's top war crimes suspect, Brammertz did not repeat the UN court's usual mantra that there is no reason to believe Mladic is not in Serbia.

"I think that if somebody would know exactly where physically he is I hope that he would already have been arrested, so you can never exclude any working hypothesis, there are several working hypotheses, but the main one is still (...) that the answer is here," he said.

Recently Serbian officials also changed their tune on the subject, insisting Mladic will be arrested "if he is in Serbia", a caveat not added before.

Asked about the changes of emphasis, Serbian war crimes prosecutor Vukcevic declined to comment.
"I would not like to talk about that, these are intelligence data," he told journalists separately.

Mladic, the wartime Bosnian Serb army commander, is wanted on charges of genocide for his key role in the 1992-95 war in Bosnia. He is considered to be the mastermind behind the slaying of over 7,000 Muslim men from Srebrenica and the 44-month siege of Sarajevo which killed 10,000 people.

His arrest and that of the other remaining fugitive, Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic, "is priority number one" for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Brammertz said.

"I think it is the prime responsibility of Serbia but we are also asking other countries to be very supportive to make sure that this chapter can be ended," he said.

Serbia has stepped up cooperation with the court since pro-European forces took office in 2008.
Mladic's arrest is seen as the ultimate proof that Belgrade is cooperating with the the UN court, a key condition for Serbia joining the European Union.

Brammertz said he would on Wednesday send his report on the cooperation of Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia with the ICTY to the UN Security Council.

The prosecutor stressed that there was still room for improvement for Serbia especially in the area of investigating and prosecuting the fugitives' support network.

"If Mladic has (...) been so successful in hiding, there are of course reasons for it," Brammertz said.
"It is obvious that he is not alone and it's obvious that he has the support of other persons, and that is of course (at) the centre of investigations. I cannot go more into details about the issues which are really of an operational and confidential nature," he added.

Two weeks ago a verdict, due to be handed down to 10 suspects charged with helping Mladic to evade justice between 2002 and 2005, was indefinitely delayed for procedural reasons.

Also earlier this month police raided three locations in search for Mladic's support network and detained one man. Belgrade also recently increased tenfold to 10 million euros the reward for information leading to the arrest of Mladic .

The head of Serbia's council for cooperation with the ICTY, Rasim Lajic, told Bosnian daily Dnevni Avaz that he did not think the increased reward would make a difference.

He said the problem was that the team around Mladic is very small now and that "very few people are helping him and know where he is." Lajic said the current network supporting Mladic was "certainly fewer than five people".

Source: AFP