BELGRADE, Dec 21 (Hina) - It is unnecessary to prejudge the fate of the incumbent Serbian President and indictee of the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Milan Milutinovic, whose term of office expires on January 5, Assistant
Yugoslav Justice Minister Nebojsa Sarkic told the Belgrade TV station Studio B on Saturday.
BELGRADE, Dec 21 (Hina) - It is unnecessary to prejudge the fate of
the incumbent Serbian President and indictee of the UN war crimes
tribunal in The Hague, Milan Milutinovic, whose term of office
expires on January 5, Assistant Yugoslav Justice Minister Nebojsa
Sarkic told the Belgrade TV station Studio B on Saturday. #L#
"After his mandate expires, several things may happen with
Milutinovic. He may surrender voluntarily, the Hague tribunal may
not request his hand-over, he may be allowed to defend himself in
freedom or he may be transferred forcibly if he fails to cooperate,"
Sarkic said.
He added that Justice Minister Sava Markovic had still not received
a letter by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal
for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Carla Del Ponte, requesting that
Milutinovic be handed over immediately upon the expiry of his
mandate.
Sarkic said in an interview with today's issue of the Belgrade daily
Glas Javnosti that Del Ponte's harsh words at yesterday's news
conference were the result of "weak indictments, which is why Del
Ponte is losing patience". He added that Del Ponte was "growing more
aggressive as her indictments are growing weaker".
"The decision of the ICTY binds the prosecution to specify its
requests, i.e. request concrete documents instead of general
access to documents," Sarkic said.
Yugoslav Interior Minister Zoran Zivkovic told reporters that
Yugoslavia had responded to every concrete request by the ICTY
prosecution with a precise answer, respecting the procedure of
unsealing documents marked as state secret. He added that the ICTY
prosecution had made "a dozen requests which made no sense" since
the requested documents were not in the state archives.
Declining to comment on claims by the ICTY prosecutor that he had
refused a previously arranged phone conversation with her,
Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic warned that Yugoslavia
would not be able to make any progress in European integration
processes without a full cooperation with the tribunal. Speaking at
a meeting of Yugoslav political experts in Belgrade, Svilanovic
said cooperation with the tribunal would be the "main criterion" in
Yugoslavia's relations with the international community.
"The arrest and hand-over of Slobodan Milosevic to the Hague
tribunal has divided the democratic corps in Serbia. As a result of
cooperation with the tribunal, 14 persons were either arrested or
surrendered to the tribunal of their own accord," Svilanovic said,
adding that it was difficult to find "any similar example in the
world" because the tribunal was prosecuting "a former president,
and is probably to put on trial another one, while two former
presidents have testified as witnesses".
(hina) rml