Serbia offers million-euro reward for info on Mladic

(BELGRADE) - Serbia has put up a reward of one million euros (1.4 million dollars) for information leading to the capture of Bosnian Serb genocide suspect Ratko Mladic, Beta news agency reported Friday.

The decision was made by Serbia's National Security Council and was aimed at showing Belgrade's willingness to cooperate with the UN war crimes tribunal, Beta said, citing Rasim Ljajic, the minister in charge of the cooperation.

Serbia, he added, would also pay rewards of 250,000 euros (350,000 dollars) for information that results in the apprehension of Stojan Zupljanin and Goran Hadzic, two of the three other men still wanted by the Hague-based court in relation to the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

The other remaining fugitive of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is wartime Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, who is not a subject of the reward offers because he is not a Serbian citizen.

Little is known about the whereabouts of Karadzic, who like Mladic is wanted on genocide charges over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

The reward offers come only three days before chief ICTY prosecutor Carla Del Ponte presents her latest evaluation of Serbia's cooperation with the tribunal.

The report on Serbia's cooperation with the ICTY is one of the last remaining obstacles to Serbia signing a so-called Stabilisation and Association Agreement with the EU, which is crucial to its ambitions to join the bloc.

Del Ponte was in Belgrade mid-September and last week said she was worried about the slow pace of progress in cooperation there.

Mladic is widely believed to be hiding in Serbia, where many still consider him a hero.

The United States has already offered rewards of up to five million dollars for information on Mladic and Karadzic, who is thought to be hiding in Serb-controlled parts of Bosnia and Montenegro.