BELGRADE, Dec. 2 (Xinhua) -- Top war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic could face trial at the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal even after 2011, when the tribunal is scheduled to close, UN judge Fausto Pocar said here on Tuesday.

    Addressing a conference on war crimes trials, Pocar said that 2011 did not have to mark the end of the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

    "The UN Security Council can extend the mandate of the court and I believe that they will do so," said Pocar, who was president of the ICTY until last month.

    Mladic, former Bosnian Serb army commander, is wanted by the ICTY for allegedly orchestrating the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim in Srebrenica in 1995 and the years-long siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo during Bosnia's 1992-95 civil war.

    The only other fugitive war crimes suspect indicted by the ICTY is former Croatian Serb leader Goran Hadzic.

    The ICTY was set up by the UN Security Council in 1993 as a temporary court designed to deal with the atrocities of the Balkan wars. Having completed most of its work, the tribunal is expected to shut down in the next few years.

    Other participators in the conference agreed that the extradition of both Mladic and Hadzic was absolutely essential.

    Slobodan Homen, state secretary in the Serbian Justice Ministry, said that Serbia was determined to honor all its obligations to The Hague Tribunal and arrest and extradite Mladic and Hadzic.

    Homen said that 46 war crimes indictees had been extradited to the Hague Tribunal thus far, and that 91 defendants had been tried in the 258 cases heard before the Serbian courts over the last five years.

    Belgrade District Court President Sinisa Vazic said that because of the planned culmination of The Hague Tribunal's work, regional courts should go to added lengths to cooperate in solving expert, legal, organizational and personnel-related problems.

    The conference entitled "War Crimes Trials -- the Current Moment, Results, Prospects" was organized by the Belgrade District Court's War Crimes Chamber in conjunction with the OSCE mission to Serbia, and with the support of the Justice Ministry and the National Council for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal.

    The conference was also attended by judges from Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Montenegro and ICTY judge Carmel Agius.