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.
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