|
Del Ponte Says Milosevic Not To Be Arrested In Short Term
PARIS, March 3 (News Agencies) - Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic's arrest "will not happen overnight," chief prosecutor for the U.N. war crimes tribunal Carla del Ponte said Saturday.
"The media is talking about this a lot, but Milosevic's arrest, I think that it will not happen overnight," Del Ponte said in an interview given to Radio France Internationale (RFI) and the French weekly L'Express.
"I don't think it will be easy to proceed with arresting Milosevic, given the investigations now under way in Belgrade on crimes or violations he may have committed in Belgrade," she explained.
"They are not yet prepared to try Milosevic for his common law crimes," Del Ponte added, speaking to RFI from The Hague. "It would be difficult to go to trial before they have finished their investigation."
Belgrade officials have signaled that there were grounds to open a criminal investigation against Milosevic for corruption in connection with the purchase of his luxurious house in an exclusive Belgrade district.
But there have been no signs that Milosevic would answer to war crimes charges in the near future as demanded by the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, with efforts seemingly focused solely on financial misdealings.
"If I have understood rightly, Belgrade will not co-operate until there is an internal law [for extraditing Milosevic] in force, and that law would have to pass before the Yugoslav parliament," said del Ponte.
"I know that in the Yugoslav parliament, it will be very hard for such a law to pass. Therefore it is possible that Yugoslavia will not co-operate with the war crimes tribunal because its parliament will reject this law," she explained.
"I want Yugoslavia to start co-operating with us, so that my investigators can travel to Belgrade and talk to witnesses, have access to archives," said the chief prosecutor.
"I want Yugoslavia to arrest the 15 fugitives from Bosnia who took refuge in Serbia and whose whereabouts are known, and to transfer them to The Hague," she added.
The arrest of the former military leader of Bosnian Serbs, general Ratko Mladic, "would be a sign," said del Ponte.
Mladic, one of the three men most wanted by the tribunal, was recently sighted in Belgrade, according to the daily newspaper Danas.
Del Ponte said that if she saw no signs of co-operation from Belgrade by April, she would appeal to the international community to exert pressure on Yugoslavia, and lodge a complaint against Yugoslavia before the U.N. Security Council.
Authorities in Belgrade have been reluctant to accept Milosevic's eventual extradition to The Hague, saying he should be tried in Belgrade.
But in an interview published in Saturday's edition of the independent daily Danas, Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, a lawyer by profession, said he was "not fit to stop" the eventual extradition.
"I can have my own political opinion about such a decision and about the tribunal at The Hague," he said, adding that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was guilty of "selective justice."
Milosevic and four of his allies have been indicted for war crimes by the ICTY for their alleged role in atrocities committed in Kosovo in 1999.
The United States and Del Ponte have given Kostunica a March 31st deadline to cooperate with the tribunal on war crimes.
|
