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Serbs bank on accord with Hague
tribunal |
By Nicholas Wood The New York
Times
Tuesday, February 15,
2005
| Surrender of war crimes
suspect hailed
BELGRADE When a retired Serbian
general, Vladimir Lazarevic, agreed to surrender to the United
Nations war crimes tribunal at The Hague last month, he was treated
here like a national hero.
The Serbian prime minister,
Vojislav Kostunica, described Lazarevic's decision as "patriotic,
highly moral and honorable." The leader of the Serbian Orthodox
Church gave him an audience and praised him as a defender of the
nation. When Lazarevic eventually flew to The Hague, he was
accompanied by the Serbian justice minister.
The pomp
surrounding the former general's surrender was unwelcome as far as
rights groups are concerned. He is accused, as the commander of
Yugoslav troops in Kosovo in 1999, of overseeing the expulsion of
800,000 refugees and the killing of at least 700
people.
Government officials here, on the other hand,
characterized the surrender as the start of an era of cooperation
with the tribunal, paving the way toward better relations with the
rest of the world.
Politicians in Serbia's coalition
government said they expected an agreement with the court by the end
of the month on the fate of two other generals who were charged
under the same indictment as Lazarevic.
They say the
treatment given to Lazarevic and promised to the other generals is
the most effective way of securing their surrender for
trial.
The spirit of the government's strategy may not match
the principles set out by the tribunal. But diplomats here said it
was proof that the policy of the United States and the European
Union on the tribunal - to threaten penalties against countries that
do not support the court - is working.
The same policy has
led Croatia's governing nationalist party to jettison its opposition
to the court and surrender all but one of its war crimes suspects in
the last year, a move that could help lead to negotiations on
European Union membership this spring.
While the surrenders
of Lazarevic and of another war crimes suspect last October suggest
that the government here is trying to emulate Croatia's example,
government ministers at federal and state levels - Kostunica
foremost among them - have said they will not consider a tougher
approach and do not intend to arrest any war crimes suspects by
force.
At least 11 men wanted by the Hague tribunal are still
believed to be at large in Serbia or in Montenegro, which is in a
loose federation with Serbia, including the court's two most wanted
suspects, the wartime leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadzic,
and his military commander, Ratko Mladic.
The Serbian
position stems from a decade of war as the former Yugoslavia split
apart. Much of the world accused the Serbs of responsibility for the
bloodshed and the Serbs contended that they were only defending
themselves from other hostile groups.
But Serbia's current
leadership understands that its reluctance to cooperate with the
court has had financial and political costs. Serbia and Montenegro
is only just undergoing a feasibility study by the European Union
for membership, while Bulgaria and Romania - countries that most
Serbs used to regard as their poorer and less-sophisticated
neighbors - have a date for possible EU membership.
Although
Serbia's economy grew about 6 percent last year, government
ministers and foreign businessman alike say the rate of economic
growth and investment could have been greater if not for the
friction with the court.
"The Hague is a sort of sword at our
throats," said Velimir Ilic, Serbia's minister for capital
investment, who was a leader of the popular protests that led to the
removal from office of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav
leader who is now on trial at The Hague, charged with war crimes.
Many foreign companies, Ilic said, were unwilling to make long-term
commitments in Serbia while cooperation with the court remained
unresolved.
Mike Ahern, the president of Serbia and
Montenegro's Foreign Investors Council, an association of foreign
businesses in the region, said, "Serbia needs Chinese growth rates
in order to catch up" with its neighbors.
But the government
relies for support in Parliament on Milosevic's Serbian Socialist
Party and the country's large nationalist opposition. That means
Serbia cannot proceed any faster on war crimes, politicians here
insist.
"If the generals had been extradited by force, the
government would have fallen," said Rasim Ljajic, Serbia and
Montenegro's minister for human rights and for cooperation with the
court at The Hague.
"We need a period of political
stability," he said, after six elections at state and federal levels
in four years.
Were the government to fall, he said, Serbia's
ultranationalist party - the Serbian Radical Party, the largest bloc
in Parliament with 82 seats - would likely be the one to form a new
government, jeopardizing any hopes of European
integration.
Senior federal and state ministers say that
pressure from the outside over war criminals is encouraging support
for the nationalists.
"If the First World War ended in a way
that had not humiliated Germany, Hitler would never have had a
reason to come to power," said Zoran Sami, the speaker of Serbia and
Montenegro's Parliament and a close associate of Kostunica. He
warned that the West's strategy on Serbia was having a similar
effect.
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