Vienna - The arrest of Bosnian Serb war-time military leader Ratko Mladic is not a political question for Serbia, but simply a technical matter, Serbian prime minister Mirko Cvetkovic said in Salzburg on Sunday.

Mladic is still on the run from the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague that seeks his extradition for genocide in the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, while former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was captured in Belgrade last Monday and is set to be extradited to The Hague.

“This is no longer the issue of political will. This is just a technical question,” Cvetkovic told journalists at a meeting of Southeastern European leaders in Salzburg.

After Serbia had proven its readiness to arrest top war crimes suspect Karadzic, there was no reason why Mladic should not be caught as well, he said.

Although Cvetkovic denied that Serbia would seek a trade-off from the European Union following Karazic’s extradiction, he said he hoped the pre-membership Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) with the EU would now be implemented.

General Ratko Mladic, 63, faces charges of genocide and other war crimes. He was indicted with Karadzic immediately after his troops killed up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995. (dpa)