Serbia President Boris Tadic said in Nis (southern Serbia) on Tuesday that an investigation was underway which should determine whether somebody had been involved in the hiding of The Hague indictee Ratko Mladic and that the relevant institutions would inform the public about the results upon its completion.

The Serbian president said that Mladic had been arrested as soon as the information about his whereabouts had been received.

“I accept full moral, material, and criminal liability for what I am saying,” Tadic stressed.

Commenting on the media speculation that the government knew where Mladic was hiding, but did not want to have him arrested earlier, the Serbian president said that the allegations did not make any sense, since, following that line of reasoning, one might even ask why the authorities had not arrested Jose Manuel Barroso or Serge Brammertz or Hillary Clinton while on their visits to Serbia for the sake of gaining political power points that way.

President Tadic added that Serbia would continue to pursue Goran Hadzic.