Del Ponte, whose eight year mandate ends on January 1, said Mladic would only be caught if the EU made his arrest a condition for signing a partnership pact with Serbia.

Serbia's path to closer ties with the European Union has been consistently blocked by its failure to arrest four war crimes suspects including Mladic.

Del Ponte argued that if the EU signed a partnership accord before their arrest, "it will weaken the real (Serbian) intention to give us the fugitives".

"It will depend exclusively on the EU if we will have Mladic in The Hague in the next weeks and months," del Ponte told news agencies.

Mladic and former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic are still at large, wanted on genocide charges during the 1991-95 Bosnian war, including masterminding the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslims.

Negative assessment

The prosecutor will be submitting a report on Serbia's work with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to the UN Security Council on December 10, when EU foreign ministers will also be discussing Serbia's EU accession.

If Mladic is not in custody in The Hague by Monday, "there will be a negative assessment on (Serbia's) cooperation with the tribunal," said del Ponte.

EU officials initialed a pre-membership deal with Serbia on Nov. 7, after saying it was satisfied with Belgrade's efforts. But del Ponte, says a formal signing of that agreement hinges on full cooperation.

"For me, it means Mladic," she said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. "Mladic in The Hague."

The Kosovo question

But the outgoing war crimes prosecutor also pointed out that making Mladic's arrest all the more unlikely is the issue of Kosovo independence, which is currently "distracting Belgrade," she told Reuters.

The future of the province with its ethnic Albanian majority has played a key role in her efforts to arrest Mladic.

The UN Security council is also set to discuss the status of Kosovo on Monday -- the last day of the UN mandate on the Serbian province, when Serbia's negotiations with Kosovo formally end.

"Politically, it is a very delicate situation," said del Ponte in an interview with Reuters. "In the end the Kosovo decision…prevents the arrest of Mladic."

"The Kosovo issue is unfortunately combined with our request (to the EU)," Del Ponte has said. "They have other political priorities and that makes it difficult for us to obtain the arrest and transfer of Mladic".