BOSNIA: A highly sensitive operation appeared to be under way last night to secure the surrender and transfer to The Hague of Gen Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serbian war commander who is Europe's most wanted war crimes suspect.
A flurry of confusing and contradictory reports left it unclear as to the whereabouts and condition of the 63-year-old, wanted on charges of genocide by the international war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague.
Serbian and Bosnian Serb media reported that Mladic had been captured and taken to a US air base at Tuzla in northeastern Bosnia to be put on an aircraft to The Hague.
But the Serbian government of prime minister Vojislav Kostunica vehemently denied the reports, describing them as a manipulation and suggesting that factional political infighting was behind the leaking of information.
"This is all still in the realm of rumour," said a well-placed international source in former Yugoslavia of the reports of Mladic's arrest. "There's definitely a negotiation going on and the Serbs are under enormous international pressure to get Mladic. They're in contact with him."
Another source in Belgrade was sceptical that Mladic had been arrested, pointing to the unusually strong denials by the Serbian interior ministry and the prime minister's office.
"The news about Ratko Mladic is not correct. It is a manipulation," said Srdjan Duric, Mr Kostunica's spokesman.
Nato sources also could not confirm any arrest and denied the information about Mladic being flown out from the Tuzla air base to the Hague. But the air of a security crisis and expectation in the Serbian capital was heightened by the sound of an air raid alert last night and the unusual sight of a helicopter flying over the city in the dark.
Signs that Mladic's days are numbered have been mounting in recent days, more than 10 years after he was indicted for genocide for overseeing the murder of almost 8,000 Bosnian Muslim males at Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in July 1995.
Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor in The Hague, has been lobbying the European Union strenuously over the past week to put pressure on Serbia to arrest Mladic by the end of the month or risk a halt to negotiations between Brussels and Belgrade on Serbia's integration with the EU.
Senior EU officials have been in Belgrade in recent days to hammer home the message. Ms Del Ponte also fiercely criticised the Austrian government, currently chairing the EU, for not doing enough to put pressure on the Serbs.
"This is a crucial moment for the perspective of this country," Vladeta Jankovic, deputy leader of the governing party in Serbia and adviser to Mr Kostunica, said yesterday. "This [ Mladic] problem has to be solved, and it will be solved in the shortest possible period."
The Associated Press quoted Serbian security sources last night as saying that Mladic had been located, but that he had not been arrested and that negotiations were taking place.
According to international sources, Mladic was in Serbia, rather than the Serbian half of Bosnia, and that Serbian security services were negotiating with him. But the sources were uncertain as to a quick and conclusive outcome.
Mladic and his wartime political colleague, Radovan Karadzic, have been on the run since 1995, but only seriously went into hiding in recent years since little attempt was made to apprehend them at the end of the Bosnian war in 1995.
The third most wanted man on the tribunal's list, Croatian officer Ante Gotovina, was arrested in the Canary Islands in December after five years on the run, taking the pressure off Croatia and increasing it on Serbia.