BELGRADE, May 2 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Yugoslavia's former Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic has given himself up to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague along with another war crimes suspect, Momcilo Gurban.

Sainovic flew in from Belgrade Thursday morning with Gruban, who has also surrendered, BBC’s online news service reported.

Sainovic is indicted for war crimes in Kosovo, while Gruban is accused of atrocities committed in prison camps in Bosnia in 1992.

Sainovic, 53, was a key ally of war crimes suspect, former president Slobodan Milosevic. He was in charge of highly confidential affairs during Milosevic's rule in the 1990s, and is believed to have been one of the most influential figures during the 1998-99 war in the ethnic war against Albanians in Kosovo.

Sainovic was indicted in May 1999 by the U.N. tribunal for war crimes committed in Kosovo along with Milosevic, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, former interior minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic and ex-army chief Dragoljub Ojdanic.

Sainovic is the second suspect indicted along with Milosevic to surrender to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Ojdanic surrendered last week, while Stojiljkovic committed suicide April 11, only hours after the Yugoslav parliament adopted a law on cooperation with the ICTY.

Sainovic is also believed to have ordered Serbian forces to launch an attack on the Kosovo village of Racak in 1999 during which 45 ethnic Albanians were killed. The massacre prompted Kosovo peace talks in France.

Sainovic was one of the key figures during the talks and was seen by many international mediators as one of the most hardline and loyal of Milosevic's allies.

After the talks failed, NATO launched a bombing campaign on Yugoslavia to halt Milosevic's repression of the Albanians of Kosovo.

While Yugoslav deputy prime minister in the 1990s, Sainovic, a member of Milosevic's Socialist party, was in charge of the special secret services of the police and the army.

Sainovic is described as a highly intelligent man, cunning and ambitious, with a passion for hunting.

His political career began in his hometown of Bor, in southeastern Serbia, where he was born in December 1948. During the 1980s, he headed the main Serbian mining and metal complex in the town.

Press reports have linked Sainovic with theft of large amounts of gold from the Bor complex and the transfer of millions of dollars abroad during Milosevic's rule.

In 1993, Milosevic appointed him Serbian prime minister. His term of office was marred by unprecedented hyperinflation running at 60 percent a day, with one dollar trading for hundreds of billions of dinars.

Sainovic kept his seat in the federal parliament after Milosevic was ousted in October 2000. But in February, the assembly deprived him of his parliamentary immunity, thus paving the way for him to be prosecuted in a Belgrade court for abuse of power.

Sainovic is indicted for war crimes both personally and on grounds of command responsibility.

In a statement broadcast by the independent television station Studio B Thursday morning, Sainovic said his surrender was the "only rational solution" and he would "continue to struggle for the truth."

"This is my duty towards those who have given their lives for the defense of our country," BBC quoted him as saying.

His lawyer Toma Fila told journalists at Belgrade airport that he would enter a plea of not guilty and said he expected him to be released pending the trial.

"I expect to bring Sainovic back in about three months," he said. "I expect him to enter a plea of not guilty on Friday afternoon."

The tribunal accuses him of participation in a joint criminal enterprise - namely, the expulsion of most of Kosovo's Albanian population in a bid to secure continued Serbian control over the province.

A member of the former ruling Socialist Party of Serbia, Sainovic is one of 23 suspects whom the Yugoslav Government has asked to surrender voluntarily in return for guarantees of pre-trial release.

Gruban, who is also on the government's list, is accused of war crimes at the Omarska detention camp in northern Bosnia.

The tribunal says around 3,000 non-Serbs were imprisoned at Omarska, where beatings and rapes were common and where an unknown number of prisoners died.

Gruban is accused of crimes against humanity and breaches of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.

But Fila claimed he was "just a guard" and could be released even sooner than Sainovic.

Meanwhile, the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, confronted by a mounting backlog of cases, may be sending some of its prosecutions back to courts in the former Yugoslavia, the British daily newspaper, The Independent, reported.

Forty-one suspects are held at the U.N. detention center in the Netherlands and judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia have agreed that dispatching some suspects to be tried at home may be the best way to ease the logjam.

But high-profile cases such as the genocide trial of the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic will stay at The Hague, and in the short term only Bosnia and Herzegovina is likely to be able to meet the U.N.'s required standards.

In a statement, the tribunal said it would have to be satisfied that "domestic courts are operating in all fairness and with full respect for the principles of humanitarian law and the protection of human rights."

The tribunal, which intends to complete its task by the end of 2008, is bursting at the seams.

Eleven cases are being heard at present and two new cases have been added now that Sainovic and Gruban have surrendered themselves to the tribunal.

To deal with the caseload, the tribunal's staff of 16 permanent judges, drawn from across the globe, has been boosted by a pool of 27 temporary colleagues, a maximum of nine of whom serve at a time, said the Independent.

The chief prosecutor in the Milosevic case, Carla Del Ponte, is being asked to put a time limit on the prosecution case, but it is still expected to take a year. That means Milosevic must have a similar amount of time.