If this witch would just shut up and let things happen, there would be a lot less trouble....
Sat Jul 29, 12:24 PM ET
Serbia is finally showing the political will to arrest Bosnian Serb fugitive Ratko Mladic after years of delays and false starts, the chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague said on Saturday.
Carla del Ponte has been calling for Mladic's handover since her court indicted him in 1995 on two counts of genocide for his role in the 1992-95 Bosnia war. She told the Serbian daily Vecernje Novosti that Belgrade had been dithering for years. WTF???
"I personally think that Serbian authorities were not searching for Mladic to arrest him but to have him surrender," del Ponte told Novosti in an interview. "They were trying to disable his helpers and send him the message he should surrender."
The Serbian government shies away from talk of arresting Mladic, using instead the term "cooperation with The Hague." It is an open secret in Belgrade that officials long hoped to persuade him to surrender to avoid public ire at the humiliation of a man many Serbs see as a hero.
But there are signs that attitude is giving way to more pragmatic political calculations.
In May, the European Union took del Ponte's advice and froze talks on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement, a first step toward EU membership, citing Serbia's failure to hand over the former general.
Facing pariah status, Serbia presented EU officials with an "action plan" for Mladic's arrest earlier this month, hoping that a serious show of effort would placate del Ponte and persuade the EU to restart talks.
"Since the action plan was adopted, I think the political will to arrest Mladic exists for the first time," del Ponte said. "I would like to see the operational plan and be involved."
She said she was still "grateful" to Brussels for putting pressure on Serbia by freezing the talks. "I hope the EU will keep that condition -- no resuming talks without full cooperation with us, which means Mladic in The Hague." In other words, another hurdle to be overcome; what next, I wonder: each and every Serb held personally accountable for what others have done supposedly in his/her name?
The plan has not been made public but it is said to include a media campaign to convince Serbs that it is necessary to arrest Mladic, who is accused of orchestrating the siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims.
A government survey published on Thursday showed 51 percent of those polled opposed Mladic's extradition, 34 percent supported it and 15 percent were undecided.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060729/wl_nm/warcrimes_serbia_delponte_dc_1