UN’s Milosevic arrest warrant handed over to Serbs
A UN war crimes tribunal envoy handed Yugoslav authorities an arrest warrant for Slobodan Milosevic today and said the country’s justice minister promised to serve it on the jailed former president.
But the largely symbolic procedure doesn’t mean Milosevic is headed for trial in The Hague, Netherlands, in the near future.
The Yugoslav government wants to try him first, and many Serbs distrust the UN court, contending it has singled them out in its quest to bring suspects to justice.
Deflecting international pressure to get Milosevic to The Hague, Yugoslavia’s foreign minister said that extradition is not a priority for a new government that "inherited a kind of semi-mafioso state" preoccupied with other problems.
"There is a very high expectation abroad that we come to grips with our war crimes past," Goran Svilanovic said.
But satisfying the West "is not something we’re really focused on at the moment".
Tribunal registrar Hans Holthuis said he gave Yugoslav Justice Minister Momcilo Grubac the international arrest warrant for Milosevic, who was indicted for crimes against humanity in 1999 for his brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
"I handed over the indictment and the warrant of arrest, and Mr Grubac promised to have it served on Mr Milosevic in person," Holthuis said.
