Serb war crimes fugitive arrested in Montenegro

BELGRADE, June 17 (Reuters) A Serb police general indicted for crimes against humanity for ordering the killings of Kosovo Albanians in 1998-99 has been arrested and is on his way to the Hague war crimes tribunal, a Serb official said today.

Vlastimir Djordjevic was taken into custody in neighbouring Montenegro, Rasim Ljajic, head of Serbia's council for cooperation with The Hague, told Reuters.

''It was a joint action of Serbian and Montenegrin police and of the Hague tribunal,'' Ljajic said. ''He is on his way to The Hague.'' Ljajic said Djordjevic had been arrested in the Montenegrin coastal resort town of Budva.

There was no official comment from Montenegrin authorities, but a spokesman for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) confirmed Djordjevic had been detained.

''We can confirm his arrest, we are talking about Vlastimir Djordjevic,'' said UN tribunal spokesman Refik Hodzic.

''He was arrested by Montenegran authorities in cooperation with Serbian authorities.''Djordjevic is expected to be transferred to The Hague as early as today, he said.

Djordjevic is the second Serb fugitive to be arrested in three weeks, marking a change of course by Serbia's new goverment after a year of inaction and defiance.

The arrest of Zdravko Tolimir at the end of May was enough to unfreeze talks on closer ties between Serbia and the European Union, but Brussels wants more arrests before signing a deal.

Djordjevic was indicted in October 2003 for his role in a brutal Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatist guerillas in 1998-99.

He was long thought to be hiding in Russia.

At least 10,000 civilians, overwhelmingly ethnic Albanians, died in the conflict, which prompted NATO's first humanitarian air war and ended with the United Nations taking control of the province.

The Hague court's most wanted man, Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic, indicted for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia, is still at large, along with his political boss Radovan Karadzic, and two other ethnic Serb suspects.

REUTERS SW KN1633