MILAN MARTIC WON'T GO TO THE HAGUE OF HIS OWN FREE WILL

BELGRADE, April 19 (Hina) - Milan Martic, former president of the so-called "Republika Srpska Krajina" (Croatian territory formerly occupied by Serb rebels), who is charged by the Hague war crimes tribunal with a mortar attack on Zagreb in 1995 (war crime against civilian population), will not respond to the Yugoslav government's request to surrender voluntarily, the Frankfurt - based "Vijesti" newspaper quoted "a close relative who wished to remain anonymous" as saying. #L# "Vijesti", a Serbian-language newspaper, claims that Martic's exact whereabouts are not known. There had been talk that Martic was mostly in hiding in the Prijedor area in Bosnia-Herzegovina and only occasionally visited Serbia. "Vijesti" reports that a former Yugoslav Army Chief-of-Staff, Dragoljub Ojdanic, who is charged with war crimes in Kosovo in 1999 together with Slobodan Milosevic, is almost ready to "contact the Justice Ministry". The Yugoslav government on Wednesday gave war crimes suspects a three-day deadline for voluntary surrender. After the deadline expires, arrests will begin. There is some doubt though whether this deadline should be extended to Monday morning as Sunday is a non-working day. Both interior ministers, the federation's Zoran Zivkovic and Serbian interior minister Dusan Mihajlovic, confirmed that once the deadline expired, arrest warrants would be issued. The decision concerning extradition to The Hague is made by the federal Justice Ministry, while the Law on Co-operation with The Hague Tribunal is under the jurisdiction of the Serbian and Montenegrin interior ministries. (hina) sp sb