|
Milosevic Admits Funding Balkans Genocide Wars
BELGRADE, April 3 (News Agencies) - Yugoslavia came under pressure Tuesday to bring former president Slobodan Milosevic, accused of being responsible for murdering thousands of Muslims in the Balkans, to justice for war crimes, after he admitted he had funded bloody Balkans wars.
As the former Yugoslav strongman spent his third day in a central Belgrade jail after surrendering to the authorities on Sunday, investigators grilled a key aide in their probe into corruption and abuse of power charges against him.
Charged by Belgrade with siphoning off millions of dollars of money, Milosevic threw Yugoslavia into a quandary on Monday admitting that the money was not used only for private gain but to finance Serb nationalist armies in wartime Bosnia and Croatia.
The admission, which came shortly before the United States agreed to reward his arrest with fresh aid, increased pressure on Belgrade authorities to cooperate with the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Milosevic gave himself up on Sunday, ending a tense armed standoff between his guards and security forces, just hours after a Washington deadline to move against war crime suspects or lose some $50 million in aid.
Belgrade was relieved by the decision on Monday to inject much-needed aid into an economy ruined by years of international isolation, war and mismanagement. Washington warned, however, that continued aid depended on Belgrade pushing ahead with Milosevic's international prosecution for war crimes.
Justice officials said former Yugoslav customs chief Mihalj Kertes, a key aide questioned by investigators on Tuesday, formed a key part of the prosecution case against Milosevic. He is suspected of having misappropriated millions of dollars on his former boss' orders for the profit of the Milosevic's coterie and to keep the old regime in power.
Kertes was briefly detained earlier this year but was released after citing his immunity as a Member of Parliament. While Kertes was quizzed in a Belgrade district court, two other former top officials waited in an anti-chamber. It was not clear if they would also face questioning.
In addition, Belgrade is changing its laws banning extradition of its citizens to other countries, but has warned that the amendment will take several months. The ICTY has indicted Milosevic and four close allies for war crimes allegedly committed in Kosovo and wants him to stand trial in The Hague.
Its chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, said Monday she was considering extending the charges against Milosevic to include war crimes and possibly genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnian war, in which around 200,000 people died in fighting between Serb, Croatian and Muslim forces.
Milosevic took a surprise line in his defense appeal Monday, saying the money authorities accuse him of stealing went to arm Serbs fighting in Bosnia and Croatia as the two republics split off from the former Yugoslavia. The claim, in a plea drafted and signed by Milosevic - a trained lawyer - himself, will boost the international case against him.
He had constantly denied that Belgrade was involved in the wars while in power, although financial aid to the warring Serb nationalists was an open secret in the West. Milosevic's comments establish a direct link between him and the events that took place in the breakaway republics in the early 1990s.
Legal and political experts in Belgrade estimate that the appeal could be a carefully calculated line of defense aimed at wrong footing the democratic reformists who ordered his arrest at the weekend.
The claim that he stole from state coffers not for personal profit but to help brother Serbs fighting in the newly independent republics could also appeal to the nationalist sentiment of former loyalists who have drifted away from him amid constant accusations of corruption.
Meanwhile, Yugoslav Prime Minister Zoran Zizic said Monday his country was ready to cooperate with the U.N. war crimes tribunal and would soon pass a law that would re-establish ties with The Hague court.
But Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, in an interview published Tuesday by The New York Times, said it would be unacceptable to extradite his predecessor to The Hague. "It should never happen," said Kostunica. "I think that it's possible to do everything so that it should never happen."
"It's not legitimate," said Kostunica, who dubbed the court "political".
"Other presidents are not being sent to The Hague. I must make some compromises, but there is a line I cannot cross. Even among those people in the Serbian and Yugoslav governments who don't think about legitimacy but about what might be politically useful, the prevailing view is that it would be unacceptable."
|
