NewsMax.com
Monday, Feb. 5, 2001

According to the Associated Press:

That's the word Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic brought back Sunday to Belgrade after meeting in Washington with the new secretary of state, Colin Powell.

Djindjic said he was told the United States intends to enforce the March 31 deadline imposed by Congress for Yugoslavia to produce solid evidence of cooperation with the United Nations war crimes tribunal's investigation into wartime atrocities under the regime of then-President Milosevic during the 1989-99 crackdown on Kosovo Albanians.

The congressional resolution does not spell out that those indicted, such as Milosevic, must be handed over for trial by the U.N. court at The Hague in the Netherlands.

But Djindjic said it was made clear to him that "influential individuals in the Congress ... think cooperation primarily means extradition."

Djindjic said he gained from his talk with Powell that "if we don’t agree by March 31 on what constitutes quality cooperation with the international war-crimes court, it would entail a kind of confrontation that we don’t need and, I think, the United States doesn’t need that either."

Any portion of the $100 million the United States has earmarked for post-Milosevic Yugoslavia that has not already been disbursed would be forfeited if Yugoslavia continues not to cooperate in the U.N. investigation.

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Kosovo / Yugoslavia