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BELGRADE : With war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic finally in custody, Serbia came under increased pressure Thursday to capture his fugitive wartime military chief Ratko Mladic, also wanted for genocide.
"The Serbs are making a step forward in closing an ugly chapter in their past, and I just hope that Mladic is next," US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in Singapore during an Asian tour.
Karadzic was arrested on a suburban bus in the Serbian capital on Monday, and looks set to be transferred to the UN war crimes tribunal in the next few days despite mounting a legal challenge against the move from his Belgrade prison cell.
The wartime Bosnian Serb leader intends to defend himself in the trial, raising concerns of a chaotic, marathon case like that of his former ally, Slobodan Milosevic, who died in detention at The Hague-based tribunal in 2006.
Karadzic, 63, had gone into hiding the year after he was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1995 together with Mladic, 65.
Both face charges of genocide, complicity in genocide, extermination, murder, wilful killing, persecutions, deportation and inhumane acts against Muslims, Croats and other non-Serb civilians during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.
As more details emerged about the fake life Karadzic led as a guru healer to avoid being caught during more than a decade on the run, Rice said his arrest was a major "step forward for Serbia."
"It showed tremendous will on the part of this new Serbian government, and I just hope there will be accelerated efforts" to help Belgrade in its bid for integration into the European Union, Rice said on a tour of Asia.
"As most of Europe was moving forward after the Cold War, the Balkans of course fell into extreme darkness. This is one more step to an end to that great nightmare," she added.
Paddy Ashdown, the UN's representative in Bosnia between May 2002 and January 2006, said Karadzuc's arrest meant the net was probably closing in on Mladic.
"He's now completely isolated. My guess is his days must be numbered," Ashdown said.
Full Serbian cooperation with the ICTY is a pre-condition for advancing Serbia's bid for membership of the European Union, and while the capture of Karadzic is a major step forward, some EU members may feel that Belgrade has only fulfilled its obligations once Mladic is also in detention.
"We decide things among 27 and there are those who will say: 'OK, Karadzic is arrested, but Mladic is not," said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.
Meanwhile, Serbian police launched an investigation into the network of supporters who helped Karadzic to remain at large for so long, thanks to his new identity as a long-haired alternative medicine practitioner.
That came after it emerged that Karadzic overtook the identity of Dragan Dabic, a soldier who was reportedly shot dead by a sniper in 1993 during the 43-month siege of Sarajevo.
"His advantage compared with Mladic, who was seen in Belgrade in recent years, is that he obtained the false identity obviously at the time when his ... friends were in power," Serbia's war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic said in a report on Thursday.
"At the same time, he had a favourable political environment in Serbia as well, so it's obvious he started living his parallel life much earlier," he was quoted as saying in the daily Vecernje Novosti.
In addition to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys, Karadzic and Mladic are jointly accused of orchestrating the siege of the Bosnian capital, which claimed more than 10,000 lives.
Karadzic's lawyer, Svetozar Vujacic, confirmed on Wednesday that he would file an appeal against his client's transfer to the ICTY at the last minute, to drag out the process.
That could give his Bosnia-based family, including wife Ljiljana and daughter Sonja, enough time to fulfil their wish to get back confiscated travel papers and see him before his likely transfer early next week.
- AFP/ir
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