Del Ponte: No EU-Serbia pact before Mladic arrest

By Mark John

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union should not grant closer ties to Serbia until former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic is arrested, United Nations war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte said on Tuesday.

Del Ponte hailed signs the new Serb government is ready to cooperate with her tribunal in bringing to justice the top war crimes indictee in the Balkans and urged the 27-member bloc not to soften its stance after years of fruitless pressure.

"There should be no signing of the SAA (Stabilisation and Association Agreement) before Ratko Mladic is arrested and full cooperation established," del Ponte, who is due to end her term in mid-September, told a hearing of the European Parliament.

Mladic is charged with genocide over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims.

The EU froze talks last year on an SAA -- a first rung on the ladder to membership of the bloc -- and accused Belgrade of dragging its heels in the hunt for indicted war criminals.

It restarted the talks this month after the arrest of Bosnian Serb general Zdravko Tolimir, a close Mladic aide, but made the conclusion of an accord dependent on full cooperation. It left open whether Mladic's arrest was a precondition.

Some European capitals argue the EU should grant Serbia closer ties to bolster the position of pro-EU moderates, and as a form of compensation for losing Kosovo, the breakaway Serb province for which a U.N. plan envisages independence.

Del Ponte said the new coalition government in Serbia had understood the importance of handing over the last four fugitives sought by the Hague war crimes court and appeared to have the political will to arrest Mladic.

"It should be work done by the end of this year," she told the committee, noting the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was under international pressure to complete all trials on its books by next year.

"At the moment things are going well."

Del Ponte said Mladic was believed to be in Serbia, but that the whereabouts of former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, also indicted for genocide, were unknown.

"He has disappeared off my screen," she acknowledged, adding she had no information to back up rumors he was in Russia or had visited Russia.

With a few weeks to go until the end of her term, del Ponte renewed complaints the Hague tribunal had not received sufficient international backing to get through its caseload and had run up against political interference in its work.

She said the international presence in Kosovo, which has been administered by the United Nations since 1999, had impeded the tribunal's work there, citing "favoritism" which "became a serious obstacle to the process of justice".