Serbia to Offer Kosovo 95 Pct Autonomy (Last offer)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6946411,00.html ^

[Banat]

Convicted war criminals? Such as...?

[canuck_conservative]

(Sorry about the delay, I've been super-busy the last few weeks. Here's your partial answer - )

Ratko Mladić [ˈmlaːditɕ] (Cyrillic: Ратко Младић) (born March 12, 1943) was the Chief of Staff of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) (the Bosnian Serb Army) during the 1991-95 war in Bosnia.

Mladić was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague in connection with the 1991-1996 siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of around 8,300 Bosniak men and boys on July 11, 1995 at Srebrenica.

There is currently an outstanding international arrest warrant against Mladić following the Rule 61 of ICTY which concluded that there are reasonable grounds for believing that the accused has committed the crimes in question including genocide. The United States government has since offered a $5 million reward for his and Radovan Karadžić's arrests.

...Mladić was reportedly seen attending a football match between China and Yugoslavia in Belgrade in March 2000. He entered through a VIP entrance and sat in a private box surrounded by eight armed bodyguards....

...On February 22, 2006, Chief U.N. Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte denied the rumours that Mladić had been arrested, claiming the rumours had "absolutely no basis whatsoever". She urged the Serbian government to find him without further delay, saying that Mladić was in reach of the Serbian authorities and had been in Serbia since 1998. She said that failure to capture him would harm Serbia's bid to join the European Union.

Romanian government and Serbian sources claimed on 22 February 2006 that Mladić was arrested in Romania, near Drobeta-Turnu Severin, close to the Serbian border by a joint Romanian-British special operation carried out by troops of those respective countries. The failure to arrest Mladić is proving to be a major factor in both Serbia's, and Montenegro's efforts to become EU member states.

The May 1, 2006 deadline established by Carla del Ponte for Serbia to hand over Mladić passed, resulting in suspended talks between Serbia and the EU. Mladić is presently believed to be in Belgrade and shuttled between different apartments by a single bodyguard....

(>>Wikipedia)

There's more info out there, just do a search.

[Banat]

Mladich has not been convicted, but rather accused of/charged with some (war) crimes. There is no evidence that he's in Serbia (post-2002). The burden of proof is with The Hague. I don't think his arrest -- or rather the absence thereof -- impedes Serbia's accession progress. The Stabilization and Association deal has already been signed between Belgrade and Brussels.

(I don't think Serbia should ever join the EU, mind you. Norway's not a member, and neither are Switzerland or Iceland.)