Serbs Admit That Officials Aided War Crimes Fugitive

Mladic Given Refuge, Secret Report Says; Firings Are Reported

BELGRADE -- After years of denial, Serbian authorities have acknowledged in a secret report that a band of about 50 intelligence and army officials conspired to conceal the movements of war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic and provide him refuge.

The report, delivered to the government in January, was prepared by Serbia's military intelligence agency and led to firings and other moves within the country's domestic and military spy agencies, officials say. As a result, they assert, the noose around Mladic has been tightened, although there is no indication he is prepared to give up.

"There is a written document in military intelligence," Defense Minister Zoran Stankovic said in an interview. "The findings might lead to the prosecution of certain people who were in contact with war crimes suspects.

"Those officials were removed from their posts just several months ago. That means that we have just now managed to create circumstances for more efficient and more engaged work" in making an arrest, Stankovic concluded.

Mladic, a general, was commander of Bosnian Serb forces during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, one of four conflicts during the breakup of Yugoslavia. Chief among the allegations against him is that he organized and oversaw the 1995 slaughter of as many as 8,000 unarmed Bosnian Muslim men and boys captured in the town of Srebrenica. Serb soldiers transported the victims to isolated spots in eastern Bosnia, killed them and buried them in mass graves.

The European Union has set a deadline for Mladic's capture or surrender by the end of March. The E.U. made membership talks for Serbia, originally planned for April 4, conditional on the delivery of Mladic to the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. The E.U. also demanded that Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic be turned over.

U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte is scheduled to visit Belgrade on March 29 and then report to the E.U. on whether Serbia is being diligent in trying to capture Mladic and Karadzic. Serbia's critics in the E.U. say the government is reluctant to move aggressively against a man whom many Serbs view as a nationalist hero.

Serbian officials deny that. On Monday, Serbian President Boris Tadic told reporters in Sweden, "We have to finalize this process of collaboration with the E.U., and there is no doubt about it that we have to solve the Mladic problem."

Stankovic played down talk of a deadline but said the Serbian government, including the army, was working to locate Mladic. "You know how hard it is to locate fugitives who have committed worst crimes, terrorism, drug smuggling, even in rich countries that have incomparably better logistics and infrastructure," he said.

Stankovic said that Serbia's domestic intelligence agency was leading the search but that military intelligence and police were assisting. In January, Stankovic took direct control of army intelligence.

Also that month, police arrested two soldiers suspected of directly helping Mladic evade capture. One, Col. Jovo Djogo, is suspected of coordinating efforts to hide Mladic inside the Serb Republic, an autonomous region of Bosnia under ethnic Serb control. Djogo was a representative of the Serb Republic in Belgrade during the Bosnian war.

The other detainee, Sasa Badnjar, was a Bosnian Serb soldier who belonged to Mladic's security team during the war. He is said to have coordinated communication between the fugitive general and his sympathizers.