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Friday, June 29, 2001

Three other former top Serb officials were delivered too, according to media reports in Belgrade.

Milosevic traveled to the Netherlands in a NATO aircraft for trial under indictment for war crimes and other atrocities, The Hague's spokesman, Jim Landale, said. He was then transferred to The Hague by helicopter.

"The former Yugoslav president was handed over to The Hague tribunal," government spokesman Nemanja Kolesar said earlier in Yugoslavia.

Milosevic would become the first head of state to be brought before International Criminal Tribunal. He was indicted in May 1999 for alleged atrocities in Kosovo that year. As commander-in-chief of the Yugoslav army, the indictment says, Milosevic bears responsibility for the mass murders and expulsions of ethnic Albanians in the province before and during NATO's 11-week air campaign against Yugoslavia that spring.

"The message is very clear," said a tribunal spokesman. "No individual is above the law."

The three others sent to face The Hague's U.N. tribunal are the former president of the short-lived Republic of Serbian Krajina in Croatia, Milan Martic; the former commander of the army of Krajina Serbs, Gen. Mile Mrksic; and Dusan Knezevic, the former mayor of the Bosnian town of Prijedor, the Yugoslav Beta news agency reported, quoting a diplomatic source in the former Serb stronghold of Banja Luka in Bosnia.

They are charged on open indictments for war crimes allegedly committed at the beginning of the ethnic conflicts in former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.

Martic is accused of ordering the shelling of the Croatia capital Zagreb and Mrksic, a retired Yugoslav People's Army, was charged with the murder of 260 civilians found in the hospital in the Croatian town of Vukovar in the early stages of the war in Croatia. He was one of the Vukovar troika, facing the same charges - active Yugoslav Army Col. Veselin Sljivavcanin and retired Capt. Miroslav Radic.

Knezevic is charged with crimes against humanity committed under his control in the prison camps near Prijedor.

Milosevic opened a bloody and turbulent decade in the Balkans in 1989 in Kosovo at the Gazimegnan field, where the Turks defeated the Serbian army and ended the Serbian kingdom in the never-forgotten battle on June 28, 1389.

Milosevic, who was transported from the Belgrade prison cell, and the other three, from unknown locations, were flown to The Hague from the NATO base in Tuzla.

The move was welcomed in Washington.

"This very important step by the leaders in Belgrade ensures that Milosevic can finally be tried for his war crimes and crimes against humanity," said President Bush Thursday.

"During various visits by Yugoslav authorities to Washington, they pledged that Yugoslavia was committed to cooperating with the Tribunal. Milosevic's transfer is a strong sign of that commitment. We are confident that the government of Yugoslavia will continue down the path of cooperation with the Tribunal," added Bush.

While Bush said that "Milosevic's transfer further signals the commitment of the new leadership in Belgrade to turn Yugoslavia away from its tragic past," Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica castigated the Serb government over the extradition.

On Serbian Television Thursday night he attacked what he called the illegal and unconstitutional extradition, warning that it had brought the country to "a difficult, almost fateful moment."

Kostunica was reported not to have been aware of the decision of the Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and most of his ministers earlier today to ignore the suspension by the federal constitutional court of a bylaw on cooperation with the tribunal.

Media reports in Belgrade said he learned the news by watched television.

At the State Department, however, officials were jubilant.

"Within the building, the fact that Mr. Milosevic is facing international justice is seen as a positive step," one State Department official told United Press International. "People are definitely pleased."

This source told UPI the State Department did not know Milosevic would be going to The Hague until they saw the government announcement on CNN.

The State Department received formal notification of the decision to transfer Milosevic Thursday at 12:30 pm Eastern Time. He was transferred in a Serb helicopter to Tuzla at 2.05 pm and then picked up by a fixed-wing jet, according to a senior State Department official.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

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