US axes aid to Serbia-Montenegro over war crimes
America has suspended aid to the Serbia-Montenegro government because it is refusing to co-operate with the tribunal set up by the United Nations to deal with war crimes in the former Yugoslavia, the US State Department said today.
The Serbian capital, Belgrade, has been wracked by protests in recent weeks because the government has yet to arrest and turn in Ratko Mladic, the ex-Bosnian Serb army commander that the ribunal has under indictment for genocide.
“We call on the authorities in Belgrade to co-operate fully with the tribunal, to include the arrest and transfer of fugitive indictees, particularly Ratko Mladic,” state department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement.
The US will hold back €5m in aid to the government but will continue to provide money for humanitarian and pro-democracy efforts.
The European Union suspended aid and trade talks with Serbia in early May because the country had yet to arrest Mladic. McCormack said the US would be willing to reconsider its decision should Serbia show it was co-operating with the tribunal.
Mladic’s boss during Bosnia’s ethnic-based civil war of the early 1990s, Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, was also indicted and remains at large, apparently in Republika Srpska, the autonomous Bosnian Serb portion of Bosnia.
