His whereabouts, and those of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who was indicted with him in 1995, have been an open secret in Bosnia for years, but the pair have not been brought to justice.The Serbian Justice Minister, Zoran Stojkovic, denied reports of secret government negotiations with General Mladic on his surrender but said he “shared Mr Burns’ optimism”.. “We hope his days in relative freedom are numbered.”The US decided to hold back economic aid to Serbia because of its non-cooperation with the UN tribunal in The Hague over the arrest of suspected war criminals. But the detention by Serbian authorities of more than a dozen war crimes suspects in the past six months has satisfied US demands and raised the possibility that General Mladic could be next.General Mladic is wanted on charges of genocide, but has spent the 10 years since the end of the war in the former Yugoslavia on the run from authorities. General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander indicted for war crimes by the United Nations, may be close to capture, reports last night indicated.
The United States lifted its freeze on a $10m (£5.5m) aid package for Serbia-Montenegro yesterday, saying that General Mladic’s “days in relative freedom are numbered”.”It’s our very strong hope that Serbia will now take the final steps to send General Mladic to The Hague to have him put on trial for the crimes he directed in the murder of 8,000 men and boys of Srebrenica,” a US undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns, said after meeting Serbian officials in Belgrade. Even with it, Britain contributed two and a half times more than both..

The United Kingdom has become richer and 10 new, mainly former communist, countries have joined the EU and contribute to it.But No 10 issued statistics showing that, without the rebate, Britain’s contribution to the EU budget between 1995 and 2003 would have been 15 times that of France and 12 times Italy’s. Chirac’s frontal assault yesterday makes British compromise less likely.Since Margaret Thatcher won the rebate in 1984, the proportion of the EU budget directed to farm spending has shrunk dramatically. One option remains further cuts to money devoted to rural development subsidies. Under the proposal put forward by the Luxembourg presidency of the EU, these would be reduced by 18 per cent to €72-73bn over the seven-year period. Alternatively, further spending on structural funds to countries such as Spain and Italy could be made, although these would prompt a revolt from their capitals.Although Mr Blair has used tough language over the rebate, his form of words has left open the possibility that it could be frozen But M. “My view is that if we want the debate on future financing, one part of that has got to be what Europe needs to spend its money on to prepare Europe for the 21st century, which is not the same as Europe 30 or 40 years ago,” he said.Most aspects of EU farm spending were fixed in 2002 and reopening this deal would be difficult.

So that is our gesture.”He added that the “unfairness” that required the rebate was due to the agricultural policy. Without the rebate, it would have been 15 times as much as France. Speaking in Luxembourg yesterday, M Chirac said: “The time has come for our English friends to understand that they have to make a gesture of solidarity for Europe.” He added: “We cannot accept a reduction of direct aid to French farmers.”Mr Blair responded: “Britain has been making a gesture because over the past 10 years, even with the British rebate, we have been making a contribution to Europe two and a half times that of France. It also coincided with a separate threat from Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, to block the funding agreement if support to his country’s poorer regions is cut.The EU leaders will be under pressure to compromise to show that the EU is back on track after the crushing referendum “no” votes in France and the Netherlands.The future of the UK rebate is likely to be a make or break issue, with Britain isolated in defence of its annual rebate but able to veto the financial package.Designed to compensate the UK for its low receipts from the Common Agricultural Policy, the rebate is a prime target for France, and for Germany, which is a big net contributor to the EU. Chirac’s call, and arguing that the UK had been demonstrating solidarity for the past decade by paying much more into EU coffers than France.The exchange bodes ill for the summit in Brussels next Thursday, when leader are due to agree how to fund the EU from 2007 to 2013.

The simmering dispute over Britain’s EU budget rebate burst into open confrontation yesterday, as France’s President, Jacques Chirac, and Tony Blair clashed directly over the fate of the UK’s annual €5bn (£3.4bn) cheque ahead of a crucial summit next week. The word derives from the acronym for ‘the chief directorate of corrective labour camps’* It was set up under Lenin around 1920 but was greatly expanded by Stalin* At its peak, the system had 476 camps – many in Siberia and the far east* An estimated 50 million people died in the Gulag between 1930 and 1950* Prisoners included Alexander Solzhenitsyn, author of The Gulag Archipelago, and Anatoly Shcharansky, who wrote Fear No Evil. That said, the curators of Perm 36, the country’s best-preserved camp, in the Urals, already offer rooms to scholars to raise funds. And the Solovetsky islands, in the White Sea off Archangelsk, with another camp and a historic mona-stery, have become a popular tourist attraction in their own right.The Gulag* The Gulag was a system of forced-labour camps in the USSR.