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Kostunica Toughens Line On U.N. War Crimes Tribunal
BELGRADE (News Agencies) - Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica signaled Monday that he intends to deal with war crimes charges against Slobodan Milosevic only on his own terms by refusing to hold talks with the U.N. war crimes prosecutor.
Since taking office three months ago, Kostunica has pledged strong cooperation with international institutions, but the new regime in Belgrade had yet to open up to the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
In the latest rebuff, a member of Kostunica's party said the president had decided against meeting U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, who had planned to visit Belgrade only if the reformist president agreed to meet with her.
"Mr. Kostunica will not receive her," Aleksandar Popovic, a top official of the president's Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) told reporters in Belgrade.
But Del Ponte on Monday indicated she would press ahead with a visit to Belgrade next week and appeared confident Kostunica would meet her.
"I hope that President Kostunica, when I am going to Belgrade, will find some time to meet with me," Del Ponte told journalists following a meeting in Zagreb with Croatia's Prime Minister Ivica Racan and other officials.
Monday's meeting, as the hoped-for encounter with Kostunica, is designed to elicit greater cooperation with U.N. war crimes investigators.
"Kostunica is meeting a lot of people, but I don't think that he won't find the time to meet the prosecutor of the ICTY," Del Ponte said.
Kostunica's office did not immediately confirm or deny Popovic's statement but the president has repeatedly criticized the war crimes tribunal as a political tool of the United States.
Popovic said that Kostunica "can see presidents and prime ministers, but Del Ponte is not even a foreign minister" before bluntly adding that the chief war crimes prosecutor was not "high enough on a certain hierarchy" to be received by the president.
But when a journalist pointed out to Popovic that the president had found time to meet with film director Emir Kusturica, the party official responded: "I think that Kusturica has more importance for us than Carla Del Ponte."
The ICTY has asked Belgrade on several occasions to hand over war crimes suspects living in Yugoslavia including Milosevic, who is wanted for war crimes committed in Kosovo.
Popovic's remarks follow a meeting Saturday between Kostunica and Milosevic, strongly criticized by many of his allies from the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS), an 18-party umbrella group that backed his presidential bid.
"Milosevic should be in jail and not discussing politics with Kostunica," said Zarko Korac, a senior official in the DOS.
It was the first time the two met since October 6th, when a popular uprising forced Milosevic to finally concede defeat to Kostunica, nearly two weeks after presidential polls held September 24th.
The meeting came on the same day that Kostunica said the ICTY "represents more a political institution than a judicial one," insisting that the Yugoslav constitution bars extradition of its nationals to foreign countries.
That statement was in response to comments from Justice Minister Momcilo Grubac who said there were no obstacles to extraditing Milosevic to The Hague for trial as the tribunal was a U.N. creation and not a foreign court per se.
Most of Kostunica's supporters back the idea that Milosevic should be tried for corruption, embezzlement and abuse of power, insisting that the trial should be held in Serbia, and could even include war crimes charges.
"Extraditing Milosevic to The Hague tribunal would amount to a compromise. We would be running away from our own responsibility and washing our hands of him," Zoran Djindjic, DOS-designate for Serbia's prime minister, told Belgrade daily Danas.
"We have no right to do that and we have to settle our problems by ourselves," Djindjic insisted, calling nevertheless for full cooperation with the ICTY experts.
"We call on international organizations to send their monitors to observe our new judicial systems and if there are some irregularities, then they should look for some other solutions," he said.
Last week, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic suggested in Washington that Belgrade could accept a component of the ICTY in Serbia.
And Vladan Batic, tipped to become the new Serbian justice minister, said that Milosevic's trial "is very near, and it is not important whether he will be tried in Belgrade or in The Hague."
Del Ponte had arrived earlier Monday in Croatia for talks aimed at easing strained relations between the tribunal and Zagreb, which chiefly centers around U.N. efforts to investigate the role of senior officers in the army in the ethnic cleansing of Croatian Serbs.
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