Yugoslavia sells its soul and its devil Isabel Vincent National Post Yugoslavia is striking a strange Faustian bargain with the international community. In exchange for handing over former president Slobodan Milosevic to stand trial at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the Yugoslav government stands to gain some US$1-billion in aid. In the process, it sacrifices its sovereignty, and its newly forged democratic soul. The tribunal, which indicted Mr. Milosevic two years ago on war crimes, is getting the best part of this deal: the international legitimacy that comes with bagging a former dictator whose complicity in ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses in Kosovo rank right up there with some of the world's most despicable thugs. His trial would mark the first time in history a former head of state is tried by an international tribunal. NATO countries can also congratulate themselves. The 1999 bombing campaign that devastated some parts of the country finally had its desired effect: Mr. Milosevic will face international justice for human rights abuses against innocent civilians in Kosovo, allegedly ordered and then covered up by him and four of his closest associates, also indicted by the The Hague tribunal. On one level, Yugoslavia benefits, too. The country will receive critical international aid from a donors conference in Brussels on Friday. The aid is desperately needed to rebuild an economy shattered by nearly three months of a full-scale military bombing campaign and years of economic sanctions imposed on the country during much of Mr. Milosevic's rule. But in handing over Mr. Milosevic to a foreign court, the country is forfeiting its democratic principles. One of the true tests of a democracy is its ability to uphold the rule of law and impart justice on its own citizens, without political interference -- a lesson many newly democratic Latin American countries have taken to heart. Despite repeated calls for international intervention in the cases of former Latin American military leaders charged with human rights abuses in the 1970s and 1980s, most are facing justice in their respective countries. Chile's Augusto Pinochet is the most well known. General Pinochet, who is charged in the cover-up of the murder of scores of dissidents after the 1973 military coup that brought him to power, is being prosecuted by officials in his own country after efforts by a Spanish judge to try him outside Chile failed last year. Like Gen. Pinochet, Mr. Milosevic needs to be tried for his crimes at home. He was arrested by Yugoslav authorities in April on charges of abuse of power and corruption. If evidence emerges that he also covered up massive human rights abuses of civilians in Kosovo, as The Hague indictment makes clear, he must face those charges in the country in which those crimes were committed. Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia, is part of Yugoslavia. Recently, perhaps in an effort to add weight to The Hague court's case against Mr. Milosevic, Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor for the international tribunal, began drawing up a second indictment against Mr. Milosevic for crimes he allegedly ordered in the former Yugoslav republic of Bosnia. A big problem in preparing a case against Mr. Milosevic over the conflicts in either Bosnia or Croatia, however, is the fact that as president of Serbia at the time, he had no formal legal responsibility for the actions of the Yugoslav army or Serb paramilitaries in these former republics. When Vojislav Kostunica unseated Mr. Milosevic last October, he vowed he would uphold democratic principles and never send Mr. Milosevic to face justice abroad. Yugoslavs needed to understand for themselves what their former leader had done in their name, he said. Furthermore, Mr. Kostunica, elected on his staunchly nationalist platform, had opposed the NATO bombing of his country, called The Hague court "a tool of U.S. foreign policy" and criticized its actions as being "anti-Serb." Mr. Kostunica's remarks sound quaintly naive when juxtaposed with the backdrop of geopolitical pressure being brought to bear on Yugoslavia. Both the United States and the European Union have said that aid to Yugoslavia depends on the country's compliance with the international criminal tribunal. They have backed the Yugoslav government, which is struggling to rebuild its economy and repair its global pariah status, into a corner. Last week, the Yugoslav government bowed to international pressure when its legislators hastily passed a decree allowing for the transfer of Mr. Milosevic and others to The Hague court. In a country where legislation often takes years to pass, this controversial government decree was passed in a matter of weeks. The Yugoslav government is poised to deliver its biggest prize to The Hague, which will do the work that Yugoslavian prosecutors had begun to do themselves. "Milosevic needs to have international justice and that's what we're waiting to see," said a U.S. State Department official who did not want to be identified. In this case, the needs of international justice are threatening to erode the democratic principles that millions of Yugoslavs fought for years to achieve. Forcing the Yugoslav government to hand Mr. Milosevic over to a foreign court in exchange for a cash injection is not about a sovereign country's right to justice. This extradition smacks more of political compromise, and geopolitical expediency. http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/story.html?f=/stories/20010628/603737 .html Miroslav Antic, http://www.antic.org/ STOP NOVOM SVETSKOM PORETKU ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?bUrBE8.bVKZIq Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
