Election in Serbia may cripple hunt for Gen. Ratko Mladic

Gen. Ratko Mladic -indicted for genocide in the 1995 slaughter of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Bosnia -remains one of the world's most-wanted fugitives. But Serbia's lukewarm pledge to capture him will give way to open defiance if ultranationalists win Sunday's parliamentary elections.

Western officials have all but given up hope that the 65-year-old Bosnian Serb military leader -believed to be hiding somewhere in Serbia -will ever face justice.

Their pessimism reflects a growing sense of resignation that no matter who is in charge in Belgrade, U.S. and European policy toward Serbia has failed, despite years of haranguing and a $5 million State Department bounty on Mladic's head.

"It's very discouraging because we felt there was a real possibility that Mladic would be handed over," said Alex Whiting, an ex-prosecutor with the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands.

"The Serbian government has played a waiting game and has just worn down the international community," said Whiting, now an assistant professor at Harvard Law School.

"Actions speak louder than words, and despite repeated promises to cooperate, they have not delivered. It's very clear that they could have, and they made a deliberate decision not to."

Tomislav Nikolic, whose ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party has a slender lead going into the elections, has made it clear he'll never hand over Mladic or former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

The two were indicted together for genocide and crimes against humanity for allegedly masterminding Europe's worst massacre of civilians since World War II: the 1995 slaughter of Muslims in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica.

A U.N. "safe haven" for Muslim refugees during Bosnia's 1992-95 war, Srebrenica was overrun by Serbian forces loyal to Slobodan Milosevic. The Serbs separated the men and boys, forced them to strip, killed them and bulldozed their bodies into mass graves, the U.N. indictment alleges.