(24 Feb 2006)
1. Wide of the town of Kladovo
2. Sign reading "Kladovo"
3. Wide of buildings in central Kladovo
4. Wide shot of of kiosks, people standing by
5. People walking
6. SOUNDBITE (Serbian) Vox Pop, Kladovo resident (no name given, answering question of whether anything happened in Kladovo regarding Mladic in recent days):
"Nothing. It's just a wild goose chase. Somebody just imagined it (that Bosnian Serb wartime commander General Ratko Mladic could be in Kladovo)."
7. SOUNDBITE (Serbian) Vox Pop, Kladovo resident (no name given):
"I don't read newspapers. I'm just having fun with my child. We have more interesting things to do. This is nonsense (referring to possibility of Mladic being in town)."
8. SOUNDBITE (Serbian) Vox Pop, Kladovo resident (no name given):
"They are lying. Kladovo is an honest town with peaceful people. It's just gossip."
9. SOUNDBITE (Serbian) Vox Pop, Kladovo residents (no names given):
(Man on left of screen:)
"No it's not true. I don't believe it. Newspapers are saying this and that, but I don't believe they arrested him (Mladic)."
(Man on right of screen:)
"(There's) nothing. Nothing."
(Man on left of screen)
"They are not going to arrest him (Mladic)."
(Man on right of screen):
"The general (Mladic) should be taken care of. Please don't let only our people to be sent where they shouldn't be sent to (referring to The Hague)."
10. People riding bicycles
11. People walking near Danube river
12. Wide across Danube to Romania
13. Man fishing
14. Wide of Danube
STORYLINE:
Residents in the eastern Serbian border town of Kladovo scoffed at rumours that Bosnian Serb wartime commander General Ratko Mladic was hiding there.
"They are lying. Kladovo is an honest town with peaceful people. It's just gossip," one elderly man told AP Television News.
Rumours emerged in the last few days that the fugitive general had taken refuge in Kladovo, a Serbian town on the banks of the Danube river near the border with Romania.
"It's just a wild goose chase. Somebody just imagined it," another resident said.
Other Kladovo residents said the whole controversy over Mladic whereabouts means nothing to them.
"I don't read newspapers. I'm just having fun with my child. We have more interesting things to do. This is nonsense," a woman said to AP Television News.
Serbian authorities are under intense international pressure to arrest the former Bosnian Serb commander, wanted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague for genocide during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
But Mladic is still very popular amongst many Serbs.
"The general should be taken care of. Please don't let only our people to be sent where they shouldn't be sent to (referring to The Hague)," an old Kladovo resident said.
The Serbian government has vigorously denied that Mladic has been detained, a claim backed by the UN war tribunal in the Hague.
UN Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte also denied on Wednesday that Mladic was negotiating his surrender. She said he remained at large.
Mladic, 62, is believed to have suffered a mild stroke in 1996 and to have a serious heart condition.
He reportedly was hospitalised in a Belgrade military hospital three times in the 1990s, using various aliases.
Mladic has been indicted on genocide charges for allegedly orchestrating the massacre of almost eight thousand Muslim boys and men in the UN enclave of Srebrenica in 1995.
The massacre was considered Europe's worst carnage since World War II and one of the worst crimes in Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
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