By Daisy Ayliffe - 24th February 2006
Serbia's EU entry negotiations will be halted unless it fully cooperates over fugitive war leader General Ratko Mladic.
EU enlargement commissioner Olli Rehn told the European parliament on Thursday that Serbia must arrest and transfer Mladic “without delay.”
Rehn told MEPs that Serbia "cannot avoid...disruption of negotiations."
The warning comes two days after contradictory reports on whether Serbian security forces are closing in on Mladic.
The Dutch foreign ministry has played down reports that Mladic is preparing to surrender owing to illness.
Meanwhile members of the former Bosnian Serb army say that their wartime commander suffers from a kidney condition that has forced him to spend his time in military hospitals while on the run.
The general has been indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal on charges of genocide and other crimes against humanity.
This includes the massacre of at least 7,500 Muslim men and boys from the town of Srebrenica in 1995.
Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic's army chief throughout the war, Mladic came to symbolise the Serb campaign of ethnic cleansing of Croats and Muslims.
Having lived freely in Belgrade for some time, Mladic disappeared when former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic was arrested in 2001.
“It has been ten years since Mladic was charged by the [UN war crimes] tribunal. It is depressing this man is still at large,” UN prosecutor Carla del Ponte said.
On Monday, Rehn is due to report to EU foreign ministers on an agreement designed to prepare Serbia for eventual EU membership.
EU governments have powers to suspend negotiations.
But so far the EU executive has set no deadline for Serbia to comply or face suspension of the talks.
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