By Dusan Stojanovic
Associated Press
Friday, June 1, 2007

BELGRADE, Serbia, May 31 -- A former Bosnian Serb general whom U.N. prosecutors rank as the third-most-wanted war crimes fugitive in the Balkans was arrested on the Bosnia-Serbia border Thursday, Serbian officials said.

Zdravko Tolimir was a top aide to the wartime Bosnian Serb military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, during the slaughter of up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995 -- the worst carnage in Europe since World War II.

Olga Kavran, spokeswoman for the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, said the prosecutor's office had been informed of Tolimir's arrest by Milorad Dodik, prime minister of the Serb-dominated republic in Bosnia.

Serbia and Dodik's republic have been under intense pressure by the court, the European Union and the United States to help round up remaining Serb war crimes suspects.

As a suspect, Tolimir has been considered by U.N. prosecutors to rank below only Mladic and Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic. They both remain at large.

Tolimir, who is reported to have organized Mladic's years-long evasion of arrest, was arrested after a sweep of the border region with helicopters and anti-terrorist units, according to the Serbian officials.

Kavran said preparations for a transfer to the tribunal's jail near The Hague were underway.

As a ranking intelligence and security officer during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, Tolimir was charged by the tribunal with four counts of crimes against humanity, including murder and persecution on political, racial and religious grounds.

The charges say that he "committed, planned, instigated, ordered, and otherwise aided and abetted in the planning, preparation, and execution of the crimes" against non-Serbs during the war, including in Srebrenica.