"It is very frustrating. I think it is the wrong approach," Davinic told AFP in an interview.

The minister denied repeated allegations from UN war crimes prosecutors that the Serbian army is harbouring Mladic, one of the most wanted fugitives from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

"We are checking all military installations, barracks and places where people indicted by (the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague) might be hiding," he said.

"Active duty officers and civilians working in the military absolutely are not providing any assistance in any way whatsoever to any of the indictees, be it Mladic, (Radovan) Karadzic or any others still at large."

Mladic and wartime Bosnian Serb political leader Karadzic were indicted in 1995 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslaviafor alleged genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Cooperation with the court is the key prerequisite for the integration of Serbia and Montenegro, the loose federation of two Balkan republics which replaced Yugoslavia in 2003, into the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO).

"I think we should already have become a member of the PFP (NATO's Partnership for Peace Program), because the reasons of joining are rather important for the international community," Davinic said.

"We are in a sensitive area and I think that the international community can benefit much more from our participation in PFP and NATO than from our absence," he said, adding that Belgrade could "contribute in a very particular way to strengthen stability in the region".

The United States recently blocked 10 million dollars of aid to Serbia -- the second such move in as many years -- due to Belgrade's failure to transfer wanted war crimes indictees to The Hague.

Chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, in a report to the Security Council in November, described Belgrade's failure to cooperate as a "scandal".

But Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, a moderate nationalist, has said the arrest of war crimes fugitives is not a priority and must take a back seat to domestic stability.

He is facing increasingly strident calls from senior coalition members for the government to start meeting its obligations to the court and remove the last major obstacle to EU accession talks.

Davinic's liberal G17 Plus Party has threatened to leave the government if those indicted by the ICTY are not extradited to The Hague. Some 20 indictees are still at large in Serbia, the largest of the six former Yugoslav republics.

"The government is working on a resolution to the problem and I hope it will succeed," Davinic said, adding that his party would decide in the next "several days" whether it will quit the government.

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