Hague Gives Belgrade Seven-Week Deadline On Mladic

Serbian Prime Minister Kostunica (R) meeting with Meron on 11 November (AFP) 12 November 2005 -- Serbian Defense Minister Zoran Stankovic has said that the war crimes tribunal in The Hague has increased pressure on Serbia, telling it to deliver top war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic by the end of this year or face "excommunication from Euro-Atlantic integration."

The deadline was issued on 11 November during a visit to Belgrade by United Nations war crimes tribunal President Theodor Meron.

Cooperation with The Hague is vital to Serbia's bids to become a member of NATO and the European Union in the next decade.

Meron told reporters after talks with Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica that "the international community is truly impatient about the endless delays in the fulfillment by Serbia of its remaining international obligations."

Former Bosnian leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Mladic face genocide charges for the massacre of 8,000 Muslim males at Srebrenica and the siege of Sarajevo, during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

(Reuters)