BELGRADE, Oct 21 (Hina) - Serbian Premier Zoran Zivkovic has said that the priority of his government is not the apprehension and transfer of four high-ranking army and police officers, indicted by the Hague-based International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
BELGRADE, Oct 21 (Hina) - Serbian Premier Zoran Zivkovic has said
that the priority of his government is not the apprehension and
transfer of four high-ranking army and police officers, indicted by
the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY). #L#
"The national council for cooperation with (the ICTY) will inform
the tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, of this
position," Zivkovic was quoted by the state-run television as
saying on Monday evening.
The latest indictments, which were made public earlier on Monday,
were "a blow, in the political sense, to the ongoing reforms in
Serbia," the premier added.
"We are bound by our law on cooperation with the ICTY," Zivkovic
said, wondering why at this moment, seven days after Belgrade's
negotiations with Kosovo Albanians in Vienna, and in the run-up to
the presidential elections, the tribunal unsealed the said
indictments.
Zivkovic said the announcement of the indictments had not surprised
him, as they had been a topic of conversations for several months
and he admitted that during Del Ponte's last visit to Belgrade he
"refused to take the indictments from her".
According to Premier Zivkovic, Bosnian Serb wartime leaders
Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic should be handed over to The
Hague, but others from the list of ICTY indictees should be tried by
national courts.
"We have no reason to protect war criminals. But we cannot allow
somebody to shift their responsibility onto us, because of their
incompetence as prosecutors," Zivkovic complained.
He said that relevant bodies in Serbia "will prove until the end of
this year that Mladic is not on the territory of Serbia, but if he
is, he will be arrested".
On Monday, a judge with the Hague war crimes tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia, O Gon Kwon, signed a decision to unseal and make public
indictments against the four Serbs in connection with crimes
committed in Kosovo in 1999. The accused are Nebojsa Pavkovic,
Vladimir Lazarevic, Vlastimir Djordjevic, and Sreten Lukic.
At the time of NATO's intervention in Kosovo in 1999, Pavkovic
commanded the Yugoslav Army's third corps, which had Kosovo in its
jurisdiction. The other three held senior positions in the army and
the police.
Pavkovic was later appointed military chief-of-staff, a position
he held even after the fall of former Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic. He was replaced only last year and has in the meantime
been in custody as part of investigations into the slaying of ex-
Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. Police general Sreten Lukic
heads the Serbian interior ministry's public security division.
The incumbent Serbian interior minister, Dusan Mihajlovic, said he
would "respect any decision of the Serbian government, but he will
not be the minister to hand over generals Vladimir Lazarevic and
Sreten Lukic to the Hague-tribunal".
Mihajlovic was quoted by a local radio as saying on Tuesday that he
found it unacceptable that somebody could be accused only on the
grounds of command responsibility, just because they were army or
police officers in Kosovo.
The minister told Radio B92 that "those responsible for the wrong
policy have so far been extradited as well as those suspected of
personally committing war crimes."
Therefore the indictments are not the problem of Lukic and
Lazarevic but of the state and authorities whom they served,
Mihajlovic said.
Serbia-Montenegro's Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic on Monday
said that he expected that Serbian courts would be entrusted with
the task of conducting the trial of the four new indictees.
(hina) ms