"Until 2002 Mladic lived in his house in Belgrade under the protection of the Yugoslav army and anyone trying to arrest him had to deal with them," Mihajlovic told reporters in Belgrade, noting that the government of the assassinated prime minister Zoran Djindjic had not controlled the army.
On Wednesday, the chief of the Military Security Agency (VBA) of the Army of Serbia and Montenegro, Svetko Kovac, said that Mladic had stayed in his home in the Banovo Brdo district of Belgrade until 2002, adding that the army had occasionally sheltered the fugitive general in its facilities.
Kovac said that Mladic disappeared without trace after the army "denied him hospitality" in 2002, and added that reports of ongoing negotiations with Mladic on his surrender were true, but that the VBA was not involved in them.
Justice Minister Zoran Stojkovic said in an interview with Radio B92 on Thursday that the Serbian government was not in contact with Mladic and that the information came from "a source in England". He pointed out that such stories were not good, citing the example of Croatia and its efforts to locate fugitive general Ante Gotovina.
"You see the price the Croats are paying for the story that they reportedly negotiated with Gotovina, and now that they cannot hand him over, they tell them, 'You have negotiated with him, you know where he is,'" Stojkovic said.
In the past few weeks foreign media have reported that the Serbian government is in negotiations with Mladic on his surrender, which the government has denied on several occasions.