Serbia-Montenegro authorities are optimistic that the endeavors for arresting top war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic would soon produce results, a government minister said on Monday.

Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb army commander, is not expected to surrender voluntarily but there is less scope for providing him with shelter, Serbia-Montenegro Minister for Human and Minority Rights Rasim Ljajic said.

Mladic is wanted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which has indicted him for atrocities in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war.

Top prosecutor of the ICTY Carla del Ponte had repeated accused Serbia-Montenegro and Bosnian Serb's armies of sheltering and protecting Mladic.

No one in Serbia-Montenegro or the international community knows the whereabouts of Mladic, Ljajic said when addressing the second inter-parliamentary meeting of the European Parliament and the Serbia-Montenegro parliament.

Ljajic, who is also president of National Council for Cooperation with the ICTY, said that Serbia-Montenegro authorities have arrested 10 ICTY indictees, and 27 others have surrendered voluntarily since 2001.

Serbia-Montenegro has the commitment of extraditing four other indictees, Ljajic said, adding that one of them, Vlastimir Djordjevic, is known to be in Russia.

The arrest of the remaining indictees is not a political issue, but a technical one of finding out where they are hiding, he said.

Source: Xinhua