Serbia urged to arrest war crime fugitive

THE HAGUE, Netherlands, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- A U.N. prosecutor is urging the European Union to delay signing an accord with Serbia until war crime suspect Ratko Mladic is arrested.

Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crime tribunal in Netherlands, said Mladic, former Bosnian Serb military leader sought on genocide charges, would be arrested only if the EU made his arrest the condition for signing a stabilization and association agreement with Serbia, Deutsche Welle reported Friday.

Del Ponte, whose tenure as the U.N. chief prosecutor ends Jan. 1, said if Mladic is not in custody in The Hague by Monday her report to the U.N. Security Council on Serbia's cooperation with the war crime tribunal will be negative.

Mladic has been on the run since 1995 when The Hague prosecutors accused him of atrocities in the 1991-95 Yugoslav ethnic wars, including the massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia and the 3-year-long siege and shelling of Sarajevo.