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Djindjic Says Serbian Indictment Of Milosevic Imminent
WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (News Agencies) - Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic said here Friday that his new government was very close to indicting former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.
Djindjic did not say whether the charges would include war crimes but did say he was prepared to cooperate with The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia in reconciling a Serbian trial of Milosevic with "external justice."
He said the Serb parliament would, in coming days, appoint an attorney general and judges who would "immediately" begin to conduct and oversee an investigation into Milosevic that would lead to his indictment.
"In 10 days or two weeks, we will have some results formally," Djindjic told reporters after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. "We have some evidence now, of course, but we want to do this in a legal way."
The prime minister said the eventual indictment would contain varied charges, warning investigators had a hard job ahead of them.
"In his 12 years, [Milosevic] did many criminal things," Djindjic said. "It will be huge work for the investigators to collect [evidence] of all of Milosevic's crimes."
Among the myriad crimes leveled against Milosevic are corruption and vote tampering.
The prime minister appeared amenable to cooperating with the tribunal, saying Serbia would begin at once to assist with the investigation of war crimes alleged to have been committed during the 1998 ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo directed by Milosevic and other top officials.
Milosevic and some of his deputies have been indicted by the tribunal on war crimes charges related to Kosovo, but Belgrade has thus far refused to consider extraditing him.
Djindjic said that once Milosevic was tried in Serbia, cooperation with the tribunal would begin in earnest so the dual prosecutorial tracks would mesh.
"In a few months [we will] start to cooperate with The Hague tribunal to connect these two justices, internal justice and external justice," Djindjic said.
Djindjic later said he had told Powell separately about his commitment to beginning the Milosevic case in Serbian courts, which he considers important to Serbian institution-building, "and [Powell] said we should discuss it further."
"The Serbian people don't want to protect war criminals," Djindjic said. "The question is, where should we start. I think it is better for us to start inside Serbia because we are ready to do that," he said.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Washington had understood from Djindjic that he understood the importance of both a domestic and international prosecution of Milosevic.
"There was a clear recognition from both sides that there are these two elements ... domestic justice for domestic crimes as well as international justice for international crimes," Boucher said.
Djindjic's meeting with Powell came as the United States embarked on a review of its military deployments in the Balkans as well as its overall heretofore active engagement in the southeast Europe.
Djindjic said he had told Powell of the need to reconstruct the region and necessity of American involvement.
"It is of course, difficult after 10 years of demagoguery and propaganda to change; we need international support, we need a 'new deal' for the Balkans," he said.
Djindjic also said Powell supported a Serbian plan to reduce mounting tension and violence in the southern Presevo valley where unrest and clashes between Serbs and ethnic Albanians has spiraled in recent weeks.
"He supported our strategy to resolve these problems by political means and not by violence," he said.
Earlier this week, Serbian officials appealed to Albanians to integrate themselves into Serb political life, offering local institutions significant power with a decentralization of Belgrade's authority.
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