NEEDLES AND HAYSTACKS

by RAY FLEMING
EVERYONE'S looking for someone. Britain's Home Secretary Charles Clarke has lost 38 of the most serious foreign criminals his department released before checking whether they should be deported; after almost five years George W Bush is still “moking out” Osama Bin Laden from the mountains of Afghanistan; and 11 years after the massacre of 8'000 Muslims at Srebrenica the government of Serbia is still looking for the man responsible, General Ratko Mladic. This week the European Union told the Serbian prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, that if he can't find Mladic and hand him over to face trial for genocide at the Hague, negotiations for Serbia's membership of the EU will be ended. In the past the carrot of EU membership has also proved to be an effective stick in persuading governments to mend their ways before they can be accepted into the EU fold. Whether that will prove to be so with Serbia remains to be seen. Mr Kostunica insists that he has done everything possible to find and hold Mladic but many people, including many Serbians, think that the general is being protected by the country's security services who have become expert at looking “everywhere except where he was hiding”. Although the EU is probably right to refuse to negotiate with a regime hiding a man accused of genocide the consequences for the Serbian government are serious and could lead to instability in its relations with Kosovo and Montenegro. The Balkans is still far from settled.