Serbian leaders on Thursday expressed hope that the arrest of a top war crime suspect would unfreeze the country's approach to European Union membership, which was suspended over Belgrade's lack of cooperation with the United Nations war crimes tribunal, according to dpa. Bosnian Serb and Serbian police on Thursday jointly arrested Zdravko Tolimir, one of three people accused of masterminding and ordering crimes such as the slaughter of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica during the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which indicted Tolimir, was formally notified and arrangements for his transfer to The Hague were ongoing. The ICTY chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte welcomed the arrest, local media reported. "We welcome the arrest of general Tolimir, a very highly ranked officer of VRS (Bosnian Serb army), considered responsible for genocide and other crimes," Del Ponte's spokesperson, Olga Kavran, told the Beta news agency. Kavran said ICTY prosecution was hoping for a quick arrest of the two top wartime leaders in Bosnia - the military commander Ratko Mladic and political leader Radovan Karadzic. The head of the Bosnian Serb military intelligence service and chief of the general staff, Tolimir, 59, is believed to have been Mladic's closest associate and deputy, as well as the organizer of his run until recently, when they reportedly parted ways. Del Ponte is scheduled to visit Belgrade next week, arriving for the first time on the invitation of the Serbian authorities. Serbia has always had at best an uneasy relationship with ICTY, as some of the indicted suspects remain regarded as heroes by the population. Following the Belgrade visit, in mid-June Del Ponte would report on Belgrade's cooperation to the UN Security Council. Most of Del Ponte's reports over the past seven years have been negative and were an ingredient in the decision of the EU in May 2006 to suspend association talks with Belgrade - aimed at bringing Serbia closer to EU membership. The G17 Plus, the smallest party in the new, three-way government coalition headed by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, immediately said it was expecting the Tolimir arrest to have "positive influence" toward the resumption of the talks with the EU. Tolimir's arrest was the second major police operation targeting fugitive war crime suspects, after a search of a military facility earlier in May on a tip from ICTY. Belgrade would do its utmost to present the raids as a sign of a turnaround and goodwill to cooperate with ICTY. But there are five other fugitives from ICTY, with Mladic and Karadzic topping the most-wanted list - the former is believed to be hiding in Serbia and the latter among Bosnian Serbs. The two fugitives remain as the single largest obstacles to Serbia's and Bosnia's progress toward membership in the EU and NATO.
