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Belgrade and The Hague at odds ahead of talks
( 2001-09-04 10:06 ) (7 )

The UN's chief war crimes prosecutor visited Belgrade on Tuesday to discuss increased cooperation with Serbia's authorities but the two sides seemed at odds even before the talks got under way.

Carla Del Ponte was due to meet Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and other leading reformers during her first visit since they handed over ousted leader Slobodan Milosevic to the UN tribunal in June to face Kosovo war crimes charges.

The Swiss lawyer, who last week said she would indict Milosevic for genocide during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, was also expected to see a mass grave site in a Belgrade suburb believed to hold ethnic Albanian victims of the Kosovo conflict.

Del Ponte's spokeswoman billed the Belgrade trip as a regular working visit to step up cooperation between the Dutch-based court and Serbia's new leaders, including the transfer of more war crimes suspects.

"It will be about this process of cooperation, access to witnesses, access to archives," Florence Hartmann said.

"We had one surrender but we would like to have more," she told Reuters in The Netherlands before flying with Del Ponte to Belgrade, where they arrived on Monday evening.

Officials at the UN court earlier said 37 people wanted for alleged atrocities during the violent break-up of the old socialist Yugoslavia in the 1990s are still at large and that several live in what remains of the federation.

They include Serbian President Milan Milutinovic, the only Milosevic-era top official publicly indicted by the UN court who has remained in his post.

SERBIA TO EXTRADITE "SOME" SUSPECTS

Djindjic, the driving force behind Milosevic's transfer, last week stressed the need to work with the UN tribunal to bring the country closer to the rest of Europe and said Serbia "will have to extradite some of the 15 accused known to us".

But he made clear on Monday that Milutinovic, whose term in office expires in 2002, would not be sent to The Hague as long as he remains president because of his immunity from prosecution under the constitution.

"We refuse to extradite Serbian President Milan Milutinovic to the tribunal in The Hague because, according to our laws, he has immunity," the official Tanjug news agency quoted the premier as saying.

The UN tribunal indicted Milutinovic together with Milosevic and three other senior officials in 1999 for atrocities by Yugoslav and Serb forces under their command against Kosovo's majority Albanians.

Two of them, former Yugoslav deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic and former interior minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, are members of the federal parliament and also enjoy immunity unless the legislature decides otherwise.

Hartmann insisted that immunity does not protect those indicted by the UN court set up eight years ago to examine war crimes during the Balkan conflicts of the last decade.

"The obligation of the state of Yugoslavia is for Mr Milutinovic and all the indictees living on the territory of Yugoslavia to be transferred to The Hague," she told reporters on her arrival in Belgrade.

Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic said he would demand during his talks with Del Ponte that the UN court also indicts leaders of the formally disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army, which battled Serb forces during the conflict in the province.

Del Ponte visited Belgrade for the first time in January, when she had a frosty meeting with Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, who has denounced the UN court as biased against Serbs. It was unclear whether they would meet again this time.