Belgrade - The new United Nations war crimes prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, on Thursday warned Serbia that it must arrest fugitive war crime suspects. "It is of critical importance ... that the remaining fugitives face justice," said Brammertz, who arrived on his first visit to Serbia since assuming the prosecutor's office at The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
After meeting Serbia's war crime prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic, he said that he would ask President Boris Tadic and caretaker Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica to "assume their share of responsibility" to secure Serbia's full compliance with the ICTY.
But Kostunica dismissed the demands and in return questioned the credibility of the ICTY in the wake of its recent decision to acquit the former Kosovo Albanian guerrilla leader, now political leader Ramush Haradinaj.
The nationalist Kostunica, who openly detests the ICTY and criticizes it as an instrument of pressure on Belgrade, has been on collision course with the West over its support of Kosovo, Serbia's province with an Albanian majority which declared independence two months ago.
Brammertz is due to report the status of Serbia's cooperation with the tribunal to the United Nations in mid-May.
His predecessor, Carla del Ponte, did not deliver a passing grade to Serbia after her last visit as prosecutor late in 2007.
Four fugitives from the ICTY remain at large and are believed to be hiding in Serbia or in the Serb-controlled part of neighbouring Bosnia.
The international community, most strictly the European Union, has told Serbia to arrest the fugitives before further integration is possible.
A positive evaluation by the ICTY has been laid out as the crucial remaining condition for Serbia's closer ties with the EU.
The most wanted fugitive is the Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, accused of the genocide of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995 and of the sniping and shelling of Sarajevo.
Mladic's political supremo, Radovan Karadzic, was also accused of genocide.
Intelligence reports have placed him in Bosnia, where he remains at large despite a large international peacekeeping and policing presence over the past dozen years.
The remaining two fugitives are another Bosnian Serb, Stojan Zupljanin, and Bosnian Croat, Goran Hadzic, who remain free because of Serbia's reluctance to track them down.
