The Hague - A former Yugoslav army general, sentenced by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for the 1991 shelling of Dubrovnik in Croatia, was released Friday because of poor health, ICTY said.

The now defunct Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) General Pavle Strugar, 75, had served just over two-thirds of the sentence ICTY handed to him on January 31, 2005.

Strugar was charged as the commanding officer in the JNA siege of Dubrovnik in the early days of the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia. His troops shelled Dubrovnik, a UNESCO-protected Adriatic port in late 1991, following Croatia's independence.

Belgrade - The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Serge Brammertz, arrived in Belgrade Monday to press Serbian officials for the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the most wanted war crimes suspect.

But Belgrade, despite its ties with the European Union hinging on the arrest of fugitive war criminals, has again said Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime military chief, is out of its reach.

"We have no trail leading to Mladic, only if a miracle should happen," Serbian minister in charge of cooperation with ICTY, Rasim Ljajic, said ahead of Brammertz's arrival.