SERBIA & MONTENEGRO: Serbia and Montenegro will not hand over four prominent war crimes suspects to the United Nations tribunal in The Hague, the country's justice minister, Mr Zoran Stojkovic, said yesterday, cranking up tension at home and with the the EU and the US ahead of controversial elections in Kosovo, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Budapest
Senior European Union and United States officials have warned Belgrade that it faces international isolation for failing to catch such suspects as Gen Ratko Mladic, who the UN tribunal accuses of genocide but is seen as a war hero by many of his countrymen.
President Boris Tadic has repeatedly clashed with the government of nationalist Prime Minister Mr Vojislav Kostunica over his failure to arrest war crimes suspects and his plea to Serbs to boycott Saturday's internationally-backed elections in mostly-Albanian Kosovo.
Mr Stojkovic said the arrest of the four Serb generals, for war crimes allegedly committed by their troops in Kosovo in 1999, "would be dangerous for the country's stability".
"There are only two options regarding the generals: either they surrender voluntarily, or they be tried" in Serbia and Montenegro, the defence minister told the Blic newspaper.
Mr Miodrag Vlahovic, the foreign minister of Montenegro, Serbia's smaller partner in the two-member union, denounced Mr Stojkovic's comments as "destructive".
Belgrade was "harming Montenegro with its extremely negative policies", he said.