AP interview: prosecutor expects Mladic's arrest

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BELGRADE — Serbia's war crimes prosecutor said Thursday he expects the quick arrest of top war crimes fugitive Gen. Ratko Mladic, but predicted that the wartime Bosnian Serb military commander is not hiding in disguise like Radovan Karadzic was.

Vladimir Vukcevic, who heads the government team in charge of capturing Serbian war crimes suspects, said Thursday that Mladic's arrest may come "soon," and added that he believes that he is hiding in Serbia and not in some other country.

"The search for Mladic is going well," Vukcevic told The Associated Press in an interview, without revealing details of the hunt, which he said are a state secret. "I hope we'll finish that Hague story soon."

Mladic and political leader Karadzic have been charged by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, with genocide and crimes against humanity for allegedly orchestrating the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslim boys and men from Srebrenica — the worst carnage in Europe since World War II — and the bloody armed siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnian capital during the 1992-95 war.

Vukcevic said that he does not believe that Mladic has changed his image while in hiding, unlike Karadzic, who was arrested last month with long hair and a beard and dressed as a new-age guru.

"The two have completely different personalities," Vukcevic said. "Mladic may have had a plastic surgery, but he is not hiding like Karadzic"

"Karadzic's change of identity was astonishing," Vukcevic said. "He not only changed his image, but also the way he walked and talked."

The U.N. war crimes prosecutors believe Mladic — who is considered the architect of the Srebrenica massacre — is hiding in Belgrade under the protection of his Bosnian Serb comrades-in-arms. He was last seen in the Serbian capital in 2003.

Vukcevic said he saw Karadzic while he was in custody in Belgrade after the arrest in July before he was extradited to The Hague tribunal.

"He walked slowly, like a zombie or a guru," Vukcevic said. "But, when he cut his hair and the beard, he started walking quickly, like old Karadzic. That was the disguise."

Karadzic is expected to enter his plea in front of the U.N. war crimes judges in The Hague on Friday.

"Karadzic likes public appearances. In The Hague, he'll be like a fish in the water. Like Milosevic," Vukcevic said, referring to the ex-Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic — Karadzic's and Mladic's wartime mentor — who died of a heart attack in his U.N. prison cell in March 2006.

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