SERBIA: Oil firm ends deal linked to U.N. indictees

(26/2/2002)BELGRADE (February 26) - Serbia's state oil firm said on Tuesday it had ended a business relationship linked to fugitive Bosnian Serb war crimes indictee Radovan Karadzic. Western officials have signalled in recent months there is a new resolve to bring former Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic to the tribunal by diplomatic and military means. A U.S. embassy source in Belgrade said Washington believed money from petrol stations leased by the Jugopetrol company to Luka Karadzic was being channelled to his brother Radovan, who has been charged with genocide at the U.N. war crimes tribunal. A statement from Serbia's state-run oil and gas monopoly NIS, which owns Jugopetrol, said on Tuesday it had leased one Belgrade petrol station to a business run by Luka Karadzic but the arrangement had ended on February 15. ''Today, NIS owns 535 petrol stations... and not a single one of them is leased or has been sold to other firms,'' it said. Both Karadzic and Mladic have twice been indicted on the court's gravest charge of genocide and are believed to be heavily guarded -- an arrangement presumably requiring substantial funds. ''The U.S. government is extremely serious about locating, apprehending and transferring to The Hague both Karadzic and Mladic,'' the U.S. embassy source said. Karadzic is believed to be hiding out in mountainous Serb-dominated eastern Bosnia while Mladic is thought to spend at least some time in Belgrade. SIEGE OF SARAJEVO ''Over the next few months you will see concrete examples of this determination. One avenue we will follow is financial support to Karadzic by his supporters, friends and others,'' the source added. ''We believe that one of the sources are gasoline stations leased by Jugopetrol to his brother.'' Bosnian Serb weekly magazine Reporter said the U.S. had made Yugoslav authorities aware of the Jugopetrol link at the end of January and said Belgrade had been told to take action to cut any direct or indirect funding of Karadzic through Jugopetrol or the company could face sanctions. The company insisted the move was part of a policy to end all such leasing arrangements. Karadzic and Mladic are charged with responsibility for the mass killing of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica and the three-and- a-half year siege of Sarajevo which killed around 12,000 people. With former Yugoslav president Milosevic Slobodan Milosevic now on trial at The Hague, his erstwhile allies Karadzic and Mladic are the most prominent suspects still at large. The embassy had no immediate comment on the NIS statement that its one lease deal with Luka Karadzic had been terminated. In an interview with Belgrade's B-92 radio broadcast on Tuesday, Luka Karadzic was not asked about the petrol station allegations. He said he had not met with his brother for a long time. ''We do not do this for security reasons,'' he said.

//Shqiptarja.com

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• Ratko Mladiç