SERBIAN COMMITTEE: DEL PONTE REQUESTED ARREST OF THREE SENIOR JNA OFFICERS

BELGRADE, Sept 10 (Hina) - The Belgrade-based committee "Sloboda", which has been lobbying for the release of the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, has announced that the chief prosecutor of the Hague-based war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia, Carla del Ponte, has requested the immediate arrest of three senior Yugoslav army officers so that Milosevic's trial could start as soon as possible. Citing 'anonymous sources' among top state officials, a committee member and senior official of the Yugoslav Left, which is headed by Milosevic's wife Mira, Dragana Kuzmanovic, said del Ponte requested during her visit to Belgrade last week that the Yugoslav authorities hand over a number of former and incumbent state officials. Apart from the high-ranking officers of the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), Veselin Sljivancanin, Mile Mrksic and Miroslav Radic, whom the Hague tribunal has indicted for war crimes in the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar, del Ponte has reportedly also requested the arrest of a number of former and incumbent state officials. Those include: Serbian President Milan Milutinovic; former Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Nikola Sainovic; former Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Dragomir Tomic; former Serbian Parliament Speaker Dragan Tomic; former Defence Minister, General Dragoljub Ojdanic; former Federal Customs Minister Mihalj Kertes; the incumbent head of the Yugoslav Army Main Staff, General Nebojsa Pavkovic; Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and former JNA commander in Zadar and head of the Yugoslav Army Main Staff, General Momcilo Perisic; former head of the Serbian state security Jovica Stanisic and 11 other officials of the Serbian Interior Ministry. Kuzmanovic told reporters the committee had information that del Ponte had also prepared sealed indictments with the names of 300 members of Serbia's special and intervention police forces. (hina) rml