SERBIA & MONTENEGRO: Serbia must deliver war crimes suspects such as top fugitive Ratko Mladic to the UN tribunal in The Hague if it is to forge closer ties with the West, the US told Belgrade yesterday.
The message, delivered by a senior US official, signalled renewed international pressure on Serbia to take action on the sensitive issue after pro-Europe reformer Mr Boris Tadic defeated a hardline nationalist in last month's presidential election.
Serbia handed over former president Slobodan Milosevic to the tribunal in 2001 but failure to extradite other key figures accused of atrocities during the wars of the 1990s is blocking efforts to build links with the European Union and NATO.
"It is time for Mr Mladic to be in The Hague, it is time for the four generals to be in The Hague, and it is time for justice to be done," US Deputy Undersecretary for Political Affairs, Mr Marc Grossman, said after meeting the Serbian leadership.
He made clear Serbia could only hope to try the four generals, wanted for war crimes during the 1999 Kosovo conflict, before domestic courts if it first ships wartime Bosnian Serb army chief Mladic to the UN tribunal. Serbian officials say they don't know where he is. Three of the generals, including Milosevic-era army chief of staff Nebojsa Pavkovic, live more or less openly in Serbia.
The authorities in Belgrade last week started a legal procedure that may lead to their extradition. However, it is unclear whether they will ultimately be sent against their will to a court many Serbs regard as biased.
Foreign Minister Mr Vuk Draskovic of Serbia and Montenegro, the loose union that replaced Yugoslavia last year, said it had no choice but to meet its international obligations. "We must go to Europe and not remain an isolated island in the sea of European democracies," he said after seeing Mr Grossman. But Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, a Hague critic whose government relies on the support of Milosevic's Socialists, has in the past said the generals should not be forcibly extradited.
The ball is in Mr Kostunica's court and "no one knows how he is going to respond," said Balkan expert Mr James Lyon of the International Crisis Group think tank. Neighbouring Croatia has won Western praise for working with the UN tribunal and in June officially became an EU candidate, a status Serbia at present can only dream about. - (Reuters)