YUGOSLAV ARMY DOES NOT OPPOSE PUNISHMENT OF INDIVIDUAL CRIMES

BELGRADE, Oct 2 (Hina) - The Yugoslav Army was the first to react to an indictment issued by the Hague-based international war crimes tribunal against four members of the ex-Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) for crimes in Dubrovnik, stressing it did "not oppose the punishment of individual crimes." A statement issued on Tuesday by the deputy chief of the Yugoslav Defence Ministry's Public Relations Office, Lieutenant Colonel Dragan Velickovic, said that the Yugoslav federal government and the army were against any kind of collective guilt for war crimes which occurred during the 1990s war in the region of the former Yugoslavia. "The punishment of individual crimes is in the interest of the Yugoslav Army, the state and the Serb people," Velickovic concluded. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on Tuesday decided to unseal an indictment against four former Yugoslav army officers responsible for attacks on the southern Adriatic town of Dubrovnik between October and December of 1991. The indicted, General Pavle Strugar, Vice Admiral Miodrag Jokic, Vice Admiral Milan Zec and Captain First Class Vladimir Kovacevic, are charged with grave violations of the Geneva conventions and the law and customs of war, that is, for the killing and brutal treatment of civilians, attacks on civilian facilities, the destruction of cultural and historic monuments, and looting. (hina) lml sb