“Đinđić promised Mladić arrest”

Vienna, October 12 (Source: B92) - Carla Del Ponte said that Zoran Đinđić promised her in 2003 that Ratko Mladić would be arrested. “Đinđić told me; ‘I will give you Mladić.’ I think that was in February 2003, it is true that he did promise me the extradition of the general.

He told me, I remember it well, that we had to wait until the spring for the police reforms. Unfortunately, he was murdered,” the Hague chief prosecutor told today’s edition of Frankurtski Vesti. In so doing, Del Ponte denied claims made by her former spokeswoman Florence Hartmann, who wrote in her book that Đinđić had asked NATO to help find Mladić at the same time Slobodan Milošević was being arrested in June 2001. Hartmann wrote that Đinđić had asked NATO to help arrest Mladić help “over the course of four days”, but Del Ponte said that she did not remember that.

Asked whether Serbia was doing anything to find Mladić, Del Ponte said that “Serbia is doing something, but is also having problems,” “I will not speak publicly now of the problems. We’ll speak of them once Mladić has been arrested,” Del Ponte said. Asked whether Hague cooperation and Kosovo were truly treated as two separate issues, she said that they had to be. “Whether they are, ask the politicians. I am a prosecutor and all I want is for the four remaining indictees to be arrested. I want Karadžić and Mladić, Kosovo does not concern me,” Del Ponte said.

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