Serb police helicopters, commandos hunt Mladic

BELGRADE, May 7 (Reuters) Special units with helicopters and masked police marksmen carried out high-profile raids in Serbia today on possible hideouts of war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, state television reported.

The searches in several towns close to the Drina River which forms the border with Bosnia were the most visible operations to date in the hunt for the former Bosnian Serb Army commander, who is wanted for genocide.

No results were reported.

Yesterday, police blocked streets and searched cars in the Belgrade suburb of Zemun as part of investigations targeting Mladic's suspected support network. More than 10 people have been detained in sweeps over the last few months.

Last week the European Union froze talks aimed at Serbia's eventual membership, saying Belgrade had broken its promise to deliver Mladic by end-April.

His handover to the UN war crimes court in The Hague is a key precondition for Serbia joining the European mainstream after the wars of the 1990s.

Hague tribunal chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte says Mladic is hiding in Serbia with the help of renegade elements in the armed forces and intelligence service. Belgrade admits he had such help in the past.

Western envoys who have questioned Belgrade's commitment to delivering Mladic have pointed to the total lack of anything resembling a manhunt. There were no wanted posters of Mladic or raids on his known haunts, they said.

Serbia says the EU freeze on talks was an overreaction at a time when the state is really turning up the heat on Mladic, who is wanted for orchestrating the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, which killed 10,000 between 1992 and 1995.

REUTERS OM PC2003