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EU Takes Softer Line Than U.S. On Milosevic War Crimes Trial
BELGRADE, Feb 8 (News Agencies) - The European Union called on Belgrade Thursday to hand over former president Slobodan Milosevic to a U.N. war crimes tribunal but took a softer line than the United States which has conditioned aid to the arrest.
Expressing Brussels' support for the new administration of Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh stressed the EU's "expectation of full cooperation with The Hague tribunal" which has indicted Milosevic for alleged war crimes in Kosovo.
But she said the EU, a massive aid donor for Yugoslavia, was setting no timeframe for a handover of suspects, unlike Washington which has set a deadline of March 31st for Belgrade to start cooperating or risk losing key aid.
She said cooperation would eventually include Milosevic being handed over, but admitted, "We do not believe that will happen tomorrow."
"What we want to see is genuine progress, which we have made clear in as firm and non-confrontational manner as possible," said EU economic policy chief Chris Patten.
They were speaking at the end of a half-day visit to Belgrade by a high-level EU team which included the EU High Representative for foreign and defense policy, Javier Solana.
Surrounded by heavy security, the officials - the first high-level EU delegation to visit since Milosevic's fall last October - met Kostunica, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic and Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic.
Kostunica has openly expressed his hostility to the U.N. tribunal in the Netherlands, saying Milosevic should be tried in Serbia if anywhere.
His office said after the talks the "possibilities and modalities of cooperation with The Hague tribunal on a legal basis were discussed."
Milosevic supporters called for Solana, who headed NATO during its March-June 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia, to be arrested himself. Around 150 people protested outside the government building where he met Kostunica.
Police said one of the organizers was arrested.
Tomislav Nikolic, of the hardline Radical Party, said the visit by "one of the biggest living war criminals is a huge tragedy for our people."
"Solana's visit is the same as if Adolf Hitler was alive after the World War II and came to Belgrade after it ended," he said.
Late Wednesday, more than 1,500 people protested in central Belgrade at the visit, as angry demonstrators threw eggs and rocks at the U.S. embassy and paraded a burning effigy of Solana.
Solana was one of 14 Western leaders - including former U.S. president Bill Clinton, French President Jacques Chirac and British Prime Minister Tony Blair - sentenced in absentia by a Milosevic-era Belgrade court to 20 years in jail for war crimes.
But the new administration has already described the sentences as "a legal farce ... unprecedented in a modern justice system."
Solana shrugged off the protests, saying he was "very moved" to be in a "country which I love very much."
Asked about Milosevic's fate, Solana told CNN television: "It would be very hard to imagine a democratic Serbia ... in which an indicted war criminal is not where he should be, in front of the international tribunal having a fair trial."
Lindh also pledged EU support for a peaceful solution to the conflict on Serbia's southern administrative boundary with Kosovo, where ethnic Albanian separatists are trying to unite the region with an independent Kosovo.
Belgrade this week proposed a plan to give the large ethnic Albanian population in the region a larger role in politics and society, but stopped short of granting autonomy.
She said the EU, which has condemned separatist activities, had not seen the plan, but it has set up an observer mission in the region and urged a peaceful settlement "without any changes to borders."
Kostunica's office said the EU had condemned "the violence of Albanian extremists and praised Belgrade's "full respect of human rights, freedom and the equality of all national communities."
However, the separatists have rejected the plan, raising the specter of increased unrest in the unstable region.
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