INTERVIEW-Serbia relentlessly seeking Mladic, official says

* Serbian agents seek Mladic's financiers, doctors

* Karadzic trial might increase Mladic's visibility



By Aleksandar Vasovic

BELGRADE, Oct 22 (Reuters) - Investigators are relentlessly seeking most-wanted war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic as Serbia tries to unblock an EU trade deal, the country's point man for cooperation with the U.N. war crimes court said on Thursday.

The arrest of Mladic, indicted by the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague for genocide and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims, is a key condition for Serbia's progress towards membership of the European Union.

Belgrade also needs to arrest Goran Hadzic, the political leader of Serbs in Croatia during the 1991-1995 war there.

"All resources are involved and the hunt is relentless," Dusan Ignjatovic, director of the Office for Cooperation with the court, told Reuters in an interview. "We will not stop until we nab them, provided they are in Serbia."

Agents conducted raids last December on Mladic's home and in March on a company in the western city of Valjevo, seeking information that might shed more light on his financiers.

"The man is receiving money from someone and we want that person or organisation," a state security official said on condition of anonymity.

The same source said he believes that former Bosnian Serb commander Mladic, who in the past suffered high blood pressure, a minor stroke and kidney stone problems, "must seek medical advice from time to time."

"This is also an avenue for us to explore," he said.



KARADZIC TRIAL

Last year, Serbian agents arrested Radovan Karadzic, the wartime leader of Bosnian Serbs and sent him to the U.N. tribunal. His trial is scheduled to begin next Monday, but on Wednesday, Karadzic said he would boycott it, asking for more time to prepare his defense. [nLM635610]

Serge Brammertz, the top U.N. war crimes prosecutor, said the Karadzic trial might increase the visibility and importance of the search for Mladic and that he had no reason to believe the fugitive Bosnian Serb general was not in Serbia.

In 2008, Serbia signed a Stabilisation and Association Accord (SAA) with the European Union, but the Netherlands has blocked its implementation, demanding Mladic's arrest.

Ignjatovic said that Serbia was open "for cooperation" with foreign agencies in their hunt for Mladic: "I am sure there is a regular exchange of information relevant for the case."

After the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, Mladic lived in his home in Belgrade, dining at restaurants and appearing in public until after the ouster of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

He continued to hide in military barracks until 2002, Serbian officials say. In 2007 authorities arrested a group of helpers who had harboured him until 2006.

Serbian agents twice came away empty-handed, in September and earlier this month, when they raided two homes in Serbia's northern city of Novi Sad in the search for Mladic and Hadzic.

"If we could pick between the two, we would prefer to arrest Mladic first," Ignjatovic said. "But we cannot think that way, Serbia must arrest whoever appears first."

Persistent failures to find Mladic prompted Rasim Ljajic, the Serbian government minister coordinating the search for fugitives, to pledge he will resign unless the former general is arrested by the end of this year.

(Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Adam Tanner and Mark Trevelyan)