Milutinovic, Milosevic, Mladic Vs. NATO and Hague

Milan Milutinovic is going to stand trial at the Hague today

Milan Milutinovic, the former President of Serbia, will appear in the court room of the Hague Tribunal today, January 27th, at 3 p.m. local time. This will be Milutinovic’s first appearance at the Hague Tribunal. Prosecutors affirm that the former president of Serbia is implicated in ethnic cleanings in 1999 in Kosovo. Milan Milutinovic stated on his part before that he had no real power during his stay on the position of the Serbian president. If Milutinovic is going to state today that he is not guilty of war charges, the trial is to take place in the second half of the current year.

Former President of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic's trial is to continue today at the Hague too. The two week break happened over Milosevic’s poor health. Milosevic’s trial has been broken about six times for the same reason. A group of specialists from Belgrade military and Medical Academy visited Slobodan Milosevic on his own request on Friday.

Tribunal emissary in Sarajevo, Vanessa Le Roa, stated that the defendant was feeling all right at the moment. She said that Milosevic does not complain of anything. “The Hague has done its best in order to finish the trial of the former Yugoslav leader as soon as possible,” chief judge Richard May said. However, a spokesman for the press service of the Socialist Party of Serbia said to an independent observer at the Hague trial that Slobodan Milosevic was not ready to appear in the court room on account of his severe psychological state.

As far as another war crimes suspect, General Ratko Mladic, is concerned Foreign Minister of Yugoslavia Goran Svilanovic said that there were a lot of problems to arrest the general. As the minister said, the biggest problem was to find out the general’s whereabouts. Svilanovic believes that Mladic’s arrest is beyond the opportunities of Yugoslav special services, if Ratko Mladic is on Yugoslavia’s territory, of course. “Everyone is supposed to understand that, including the ones, who wish to help us,” added Goran Svilanovic.

And another thing that is worth mentioning. It has recently become known that the Croatian government officially demanded Belgrade should pay 15 million dollars to Zagreb (Croatia’s capital) as a compensation for the damage that was caused to Zagreb during the war between Serbia and Croatia. The government of Croatia is going to address to the European Union with a requirement to make Belgrade pay the claimed money. However, Croatia’s righteous ardor becomes nothing, when it goes about sanctions against Croatia itself. For instance, the Croatian government has  not delivered war crimes suspect Janko Bobetko to the Hague yet. General Bobetko is currently staying at a Croatian health center. Croatian Prime Minister Ivica Racan personally guaranteed Bobetko that no indictment would be handed over to the general during his treatment at the health center.

On the photo: NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia in the spring of 1999. Photo taken from Srpskapolitika.com

Sergey Stefanov
PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov