PARIS (Reuters) -- The European Union should suspend association talks with Serbia to pressure Belgrade into arresting top Bosnian Serb war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic, the chief UN war crimes prosecutor said on Tuesday.

In an interview with France's Le Figaro newspaper, Carla del Ponte said she believed Serbia would arrest Mladic if the EU put the brakes on the Balkan country's bid for closer ties to and eventual membership of the wealthy bloc. "If the negotiations are suspended, the Serbs will have to arrest Mladic," she said.

"If Europe gave itself a way to demand Mladic's arrest from Belgrade, the Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica would do it."

Mladic has been twice indicted for genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnia war over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys and the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, in which over 10,000 civilians were killed.

The EU has said that unless he is handed over in the next few months, Brussels could suspend Stabilisation and Association talks which started last year after Belgrade handed over more than a dozen lesser suspects to The Hague-based court.

The talks are the first step on the long road to membership.

Del Ponte said she wanted the EU to pressure Serbia in the same way it did Croatia over war crimes fugitive General Ante Gotovina. His arrest in December cleared the way for Croatia to open delayed membership talks. "The EU refused to open talks with Croatia because Zagreb hadn't arrested General Ante Gotovina," she said.

"I want the EU to adopt the same attitude with Belgrade, which is not cooperating with the tribunal."

The handover of Mladic is a sensitive political issue in Serbia and Bosnia's Serb Republic.

The former general and his wartime political boss Radovan Karadzic, indicted on the same charges and also at large, are seen as heroes by many ethnic Serbs who believe charges of Serb atrocities against Bosnian Muslims were grossly exaggerated.