LABUS SAYS SERBIAN GOVERNMENT WANTS COOPERATION AND STABILITY IN REGION

SARAJEVO, March 15 (Hina) - Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus said on Monday that the new government in Serbia would insist on strengthening stability and cooperation in the region and would fully meet its commitments towards the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.#L# "The new Serbian government is democratic, reform-minded and pro-European," Labus told reporters in Sarajevo after meeting the Chairman of the Bosnian Council of Ministers, Adnan Terzic. Labus is the first member of the new government to visit other countries in the region to convince them of Serbia's readiness to continue cooperation and maintain stability. He said that all countries in the region shared the goal of joining the European Union and NATO, and that therefore they should work together on achieving this objective. Responding to questions from the press, Labus said there were no major differences between him and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica and that this would be clear from their efforts to strengthen the union of Serbia and Montenegro. Asked what his government would do in view of the fact that Belgrade had been given the March 31 deadline to prove its readiness for cooperation with the Hague tribunal, Labus said he did not expect any dramatic changes before that date, but pointed out that the government would cooperate with the tribunal. He explicitly said that the new government in Serbia would make every effort to arrest Bosnian Serb wartime military commander Ratko Mladic, who is sought by the tribunal and who the international community believes is hiding in Serbia. "All our intelligence services have been ordered to check if Ratko Mladic is in Serbia. If he really is, there will be no obstacles to implementing the law," he said. Terzic said the authorities in Sarajevo welcomed the readiness of the new Serbian government to cooperate and promote economic and political relations. Terzic stressed that Bosnia-Herzegovina was of crucial importance to the stability of the entire Balkans, including Serbia. Labus also met other senior officials of the State of Bosnia-Herzegovina and its two entities -- the Muslim-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska. Later in the day he was scheduled to visit Banja Luka. (Hina) vm