UN chief war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte is visiting Serbia and Montenegro as a deadline looms for handing over fugitive Ratko Mladic.

The European Union has said it will suspend negotiations on closer ties with Belgrade unless the former Bosnian Serb commander is apprehended.

Serbia and Montenegro has been given to 5 April to produce General Mladic.

The ex-Yugoslav state is in talks with the EU on establishing an association and stabilisation agreement.

That is the first step towards eventual membership.

Serbian President Boris Tadic said that he had launched what he called a diplomatic offensive to extend the deadline but that initial reactions had not been favourable.

Speculation mounts

Finance Minister Mladjan Dinkic said his government was doing its best to deliver Ratko Mladic to the Hague war crimes tribunal and he hoped the April deadline would be met.

Ms del Ponte has made it clear she believes the former head of the Bosnian Serb military is being sheltered here.

The Serbian authorities continue to deny knowledge of his whereabouts while at the same time assuring the rest of the world that he will be apprehended soon.

Over recent weeks there has been intense speculation that negotiations for his surrender may be reaching fruition.

Ratko Mladic has been on the run for a decade since he was charged with genocide and other crimes against humanity, mainly in connection with the siege of Sarajevo in the early 1990s and the Srebrenica massacre of 1995 in which nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Serb forces.

His civilian counterpart at the time, Radovan Karadjic, is also on the run but very little is known about where he may be hiding.

In the years immediately following the Bosnian war, Mr Karadjic was regularly spotted by Nato peacekeepers who failed to arrest him.

Since then he has disappeared.

PHOTO CAPTION

A Bosnian Serb holds a photograph of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic alongside calendars of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (C) and top fugitive General Ratko Mladic (R) at a market in Banja Luka March 12, 2006. (Reuters)

BBC