“EU awaits full Hague co-operation”

“EU awaits full Hague co-operation”

When asked whether she believed that the new Serbian government led by the old prime minister would indeed arrest war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladić, European Parliament deputy Doris Pack stressed that president Tadić was the one who had made the promise.

“I think that the security services have come under the umbrella of president Tadić who always showed a disposition to co-operate, so we expect him to do so,” she said.

Nonetheless, analysts say that even though Tadić took command of the National Security Council, the division of security agencies between Tadić’s DS and Koštunica’s DSS sets boundaries to his power to co-ordinate their work.

According to the DS-DSS cabinet deal, Dragan Jočić has remained the first man of the ministry of interior even though the Hague and Brussels officials chastised him in the past for the lack of co-operation with the Tribunal.

Meanwhile, Rade Bulatović, whose dismissal was requested on several occasions by chief Hague prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, will keep the post of State Security Agency (BIA) chief until Tadić and Koštunica decide otherwise.

“The half of new government’s staff are the same people that were in office at the time the EU suspended SAA talks last year. The government will have to show strong political willingness to arrest Mladić. Of course, it cannot be done if he is not in Serbia, which would be very difficult to prove,” Dragomir Jovanović, European Economy Institute executive director, said.