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Bosnian Serbs To Cooperate with U.N. War Crimes Court
BANJA LUKA, Bosnia-Hercegovina, July 3 (News Agencies) - The Bosnian Serb government the way to cooperation with the U.N. war crimes tribunal, on Tuesday as former Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, made his first historic appearance before the court in The Hague.
Biljana Maric, Justice Minister for the Bosnian Serb entity, said a draft law on cooperation with the international court had been sent to the RS parliament and would be discussed at the assembly's next session, probably at the end of month.
"Cooperation with The Hague Tribunal is an obligation for Republika Srpska and Bosnia under the Dayton peace agreement," Maric told a news conference.
The Serb member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, Zivko Radisic, echoed her view.
"The Republika Srpska can and must meet its obligations under the Dayton agreement including a constructive cooperation with The Hague tribunal," Radisic told journalists, adding that such cooperation meant "everything, including extraditions."
The Dayton peace accords, which ended the 1992-95 war, left Bosnia divided into two entities -- the Serbs' Republika Srpska (RS) and the Muslim-Croat Federation.
Bosnian Serb war leaders -- former president, Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Ratko Mladic -- are still wanted by the U.N. tribunal and remain at large with the media regularly reporting that they are hiding out in the RS.
The U.N. War Crimes Tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, has put the government in Banja Luka under increased pressure to find and arrest both men and hand them over to The Hague.
The two are accused of being responsible for two of the bloodiest chapters in Bosnia's war: the 42-month siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre.
Between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslims were either killed or disappeared after Serb forces overran the Srebrenica enclave, a U.N.-declared safe haven, on July 11, 1995, in killings described as Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.
The Bosnian Serb entity, is the only part of the former federation of Yugoslavia which has not yet agreed to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
The international community sees the republic as a haven for indicted war crime suspects.
Its refusal to arrest war crimes suspects led the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) serving in Bosnia to carry out such arrests itself.
The RS government's decision to move towards cooperation with the ICTY follows Yugoslavia's extradition of Milosevic to The Hague last Thursday -- a move that brought down the Belgrade government.
Under the draft RS law, the Bosnian Serb authorities would, at the U.N. tribunal's request, "undertake investigations, provide proof of crimes and issue a wanted list," Justice Minister Maric said.
But, the minister declined to say whether RS police would actually arrest war crimes suspects in the republic.
With the ICTY's approval, some war crimes suspects would be tried in local courts, she said.
In the other Balkan states formed after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, local courts have ICTY approval to try some suspects, while the most serious cases are dealt with in The Hague.
Suspects wanted for extradition to the U.N. court would have a right to appeal against transfer to The Hague, after which the Bosnian Serb Supreme Court would have three days to decide whether to send them to the tribunal, she said.
Maric said Prime Minister Mladen Ivanic and Ivanic's advisor for relations with the U.N. court, Sinisa Djordjevic, would present a copy of the draft law to court officials in The Hague during a four day visit there starting Wednesday.
Meanwhile, international envoys in Bosnia renewed their pressure on RS on Tuesday, warning that deeds were better than words.
"You need to have the war crimes suspects arrested, you need to have them transferred, that is the only thing that really matters," U.N. spokesman, Douglas Coffman, told a press conference in Sarajevo.
"There is no room for delay, the focus has shifted from Belgrade to RS," Sanela Tunovic, a spokeswoman from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) warned.
Ivanic recently said he wanted a law on war crimes suspects put to parliament so that political parties would be forced to show openly whether or not they favored cooperation with the ICTY.
But, Tunovic said the law was not necessary since Bosnia's obligation to extradite those indicted for war crimes was already enshrined under its U.N. membership.
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