Hague indictment a "mistake", Milutinovic says Belgrade (dpa) - Serbian President Milan Milutinovic said Sunday that he is not worried about a possible extradition to the International War Crimes Tribunal, which he said made a "mistake" when indicting him two years ago over his role in the Kosovo war. "The indictment is formalistic and not argued," he said in an interview with Belgrade's BKTV television, adding that he has "never heard of villages and names listed" in the indictment. "I have no fear and feel no guilt because I think it is a mistake, but one cannot jump out if his skin," Milutinovic said. In his words, "If somebody else had been president of Serbia at the time, he would have also been indicted." Milutinovic is the only member of the deposed Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's regime who is still in office. Three other top officials were indicted alongside Milosevic and Milutinovic. Yugoslavia is under pressure from the West to extradite war crimes suspects and the ruling Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS) has signalled willingness to cooperate. But leading DOS officials appear concerned that a bill that would formalize the cooperation with the Hague tribunal might be shot down by their coalition partners from Montenegro, the Socialist People's Party (SNP). Even if the bill fails, though, extraditions would happen, DOS leaders in the Serbian goverment indicated. "If the bill fails, DOS will have to take responsibility, becuase politicians cannot hide behind legal procedure " Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic said Sunday in Belgrade, after meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin. He denied that he discussed the Hague tribunal with Putin and stressed that he does not know if the bill would be turned into a law. "I cannot tell - am not psychic. The chances are half-half and I would not recommend a bet either way," he said after reporters insisted on his estimation of the outcome next Thursday. A day earlier, Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic also signalled that war crimes suspects face extradition whether or not the bill passes the parliament. His statement came a day after the find of another mass grave in Serbia, presumably containing bodies of Albanians killed in Kosovo and taken away in an organized campaign to destroy evidence of attrocities. The grave, near a Yugoslav Army (VJ) commando training camp in Petrovo Selo, contains the remains of between 20 and 25 bodies, mostly men. Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic said earlier that an order to security forces to "clean up" battlefields in Kosovo during the 1998-1999 war aimed to remove evidence of atrocities. He said the investigation traced the "sanitation" order to a meeting of Milosevic's cabinet. The first grave, with 86 bodies, was discovered near Belgrade last month and exhumation was underway, under observation of the Hague tribunal experts. The tribunal chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte would visit Belgrade on an unspecified day next week, to evaluate the progress Belgrade has made in cooperation with the United Nations' court, established to try war crimes suspects in former Yugoslavia. Miroslav Antic, http://www.antic.org/ Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
