The Sunday Times February 26, 2006
£3m offer for surrender fails to sway Mladic Tom Walker and Jon Swain,
Sarajevo
AMERICAN negotiators have offered the family and bodyguards of General Ratko
Mladic up to $5m (£3m) in compensation if the Bosnian Serb commander turns
himself in after 10 years on the run.
He would be taken to the Hague and tried by the International Criminal
Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for allegedly ordering the murder of
8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995.
Serb military intelligence sources said Mladic spent at least a day in
Belgrade last week in secret negotiations with go-betweens representing the
Serbian and US governments, but the talks broke down when he demanded tens
of millions of euros.
Mladic was said to be in an exceptionally difficult psychological state.
News of the negotiations was greeted with outrage in Bosnia, where survivors
of Mladics reign of terror claimed the portly general was effectively being
rewarded for his crimes.
The Serbian government denied persistent reports last week that he had
already been arrested. But the sources are confident that Mladic will be
handed over soon.
About 10,000 supporters rallied in the centre of Belgrade on Friday
protesting against any attempt to extradite Mladic. But the Serbian
government is under pressure to co-operate with the international community
and assist in bringing Mladic to justice in return for increased aid.
Vojislav Kostunica, the prime minister, has been told that his countrys
wiggle room in talks on the future of Kosovo will be enhanced once the
general is delivered.
America considers Serbias stability crucial for the regions future and is
anxious that its accession talks with the European Union move forwards over
the coming months. It also wants the Hague tribunal, which costs more than
£70m a year, to wrap up its outstanding cases as soon as possible.
American negotiators are wary of a possible backlash if they are seen to be
buying Mladics arrest.
The intelligence sources said Mladic appeared to be holed up again this
weekend in a hideout in the Serbian countryside, possibly on Cer mountain,
75 miles west of the capital, where the army has a missile base and a
network of underground bunkers. Other sources claimed he was effectively
under house arrest in a villa on the outskirts of Belgrade.
The sources said talks had broken down in part because Mladic tried to lay
down conditions for his handover, insisting he should not be seen publicly
in handcuffs and should be flown directly from Serbia to the Netherlands.
Kostunica is said to be adamant that Mladic must be transferred from Bosnia.
Mladic faces charges of genocide for his role as commander of the Bosnian
Serb army during the Srebrenica massacre, the worst mass killing in Europe
since the second world war.
Remzija Hasanovic, one of the mothers of Srebrenica who lost their loved
ones, said: It is all coming too late for me my life is over. Nothing can
compensate for my loss.
Like others, she was furious at the idea of Mladics family gaining
financially from his arrest. How dare they contemplate such a thing? she
said.
Hasanovic had returned to Srebrenica from Lausanne, Switzerland, where she
now lives, to mourn her two sons. The youngest, Remzudin, 13, disappeared in
July 1995 when he fled with his grandfather after Bosnian Serb forces
overran the town, which had been declared a safe haven by the UN.
The grandfathers body was later found in a mass grave. He had been shot.
Remzudin simply disappeared.
Then, on February 13, Hasanovic received a letter from the International
Commission for Missing Persons in Tuzla, north of Srebrenica, where
thousands of bodybags and sacks of personal remains gathered from grave
sites across Bosnia are stacked from floor to ceiling for identification.
DNA analysis of a bone had identified it as belonging to Remzudin. We
always expected it, but when the news came it was devastating, Hasanovic
said.
Later the same day her older son, Nesib, 27, who had escaped from Srebrenica
through the woods with her husband, went quietly to his room and hanged
himself.
On the other side of Bosnia, Serbs in the little snowbound village of
Bozinovici, where Mladic was born in March, 1943, regard him as a hero. He
was just a good soldier doing his duty, said Mladics cousin, Duskol.
He was always correct with the Muslim civilians.
He was an honest man, too. Even I drive a car better than his was.
Serbian News Network - SNN
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http://www.antic.org/
