There couldn't be a clearer admission of their inability to bring accused war criminals to justice: the Serbian government has issued a plea for foreign spies to join the hunt for the former Bosnian Serb military leader General Ratko Mladic, who was indicted by

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nginx/1.14.0 (Ubuntu) the UN war-crimes tribunal in 1994 and is presumably hiding on Serbian soil.

"Since we can't find Mladic on our own, we need to engage the E.U. and United States to help us solve this problem," Mladjan Dinkic, the Finance Minister in the Cabinet of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica said last week. Earlier, Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic declared that he will seek help of Germany's main spy agency, the BND, to help track down the fugitive.

The stakes are high. The failure to arrest the general, charged with genocide and crimes against humanity, prompted E.U. officials to freeze membership talks with Serbia two months ago. Eleven years ago, Mladic's forces overran the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica and slaughtered some 8,000 captured men and boys.

The prospect of foreign spies roaming through the country caused an outrage in Serbia, where Mladic still enjoys a wide popular support. The ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party accused the government of grand treason. Kostunica, a centrist, is torn between his proclaimed policy of joining the E.U. and the fear of nationalist backlash.

Western observers say that the government's efforts to track down Mladic have been, at best, half-hearted, and they have doubts that his appeal for help is entirely sincere. "We haven't received an official request from the government, and we are not sure what kind of intelligence support they seek," a Western diplomat told Time. "We are still pondering whether Kostunica really needs our help, or just wants us to provide him with an alibi. If that is the case, we are not going to get involved at all."

• DEJAN ANASTASIJEVIC
• Serbia hopes foreign spies can hunt down wanted general