Agence France Presse. 25 June 2001.
Milosevic decree not enough to convince US on donors conference: officials.
WASHINGTON -- Despite moves to transfer Slobodan Milosevic to an
international war crimes tribunal, the United States is not yet
convinced Belgrade has met its conditions to attend this week's key
donors conference for Yugoslavia, senior US officials said Monday.
US ambassador to Yugoslavia William Montgomery was to meet with Serbian
Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic to deliver the message that Washington
must see more evidence of cooperation with the tribunal before
participating in the conference set for Friday in Brussels, they said.
One senior State Department official said a decision on attending the
meeting would be made on or by Wednesday, giving Belgrade 48 hours to
take steps beyond a weekend decree that could allow Milosevic to be sent
to The Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY).
"We want to go to the donors conference, we want to help [!!!!!!]
Yugoslavia, but I don't know that we've seen anything yet that would
allow us to do that," the official told AFP.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the controversial
decree issued Saturday did not in itself represent a significant step
toward cooperating with the ICTY as demanded by the United States and
other western countries.
[N.B.] "It has been our view all along that they didn't need to have any
special legislation or decree or whatever to permit Milosevic to be sent
to The Hague," he said [!!!!!].
"We believe they could have, and should have, already done that, so this
decree does not move the ball forward in our estimation."
Belgrade had balked at sending Milosevic to The Hague insisting that its
constitution does not allow for the extradition of Yugoslav citizens.
Washington has rejected that argument on technical legal grounds, saying
Milosevic would not be extradited because extradition involves turning
someone over to a sovereign nation rather than a UN-backed institution
like the ICTY.
A second senior US official said Washington, like others demanding
Milosevic's prosecution by the ICTY, wanted to see Belgrade give
tribunal prosecutors access to archives and witnesses as well as turn
over to the court other indictees.
"Those are the bottom-line issues," the second official said. "Without
any of those, or at least moves toward them, it will be hard for us to
say that Belgrade is cooperating."
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Serbian News Network - SNN
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http://www.antic.org/
