Serbia, Croatia to Surrender 3 War Crimes Suspects

The presidents of Serbia and Croatia agreed Monday to surrender three suspected war criminals to international prosecutors, and leaders of all three Bosnian factions promised to release remaining prisoners in a new effort to revive the Dayton, Ohio, peace accord.

After more than eight hours of meetings with Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Presidents Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia and Vice President Ejup Ganic of Bosnia renewed their commitment to a multiethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina despite weeks of violent “ethnic cleansing” in formerly Serb-controlled suburbs of Sarajevo.

“We made some progress today, but we didn’t solve all the problems,” Christopher told reporters following the daylong talks.

Christopher summoned Milosevic, Tudjman and Ganic, filling in for ailing Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, to Geneva after arson and looting in Sarajevo neighborhoods threatened to torpedo the entire Dayton agreement.

Christopher announced that U.S. Adm. Leighton W. Smith, commander of the NATO-led international peacekeeping force in Bosnia, will step up NATO patrols in the Grbavica suburb starting today to prevent additional expulsions of Serbs and to begin to create conditions that will allow those who have left to return.

Grbavica is the last of the formerly Serb-held suburbs to revert to the control of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat federation. In each of the neighborhoods changing hands, Serbs have been driven from their homes, either by Serbian thugs intent on preventing Serbs from living under Muslim authority or by Muslim thugs out to seize houses and apartments.

“What has been happening in Sarajevo is a tragedy,” said Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister in charge of civilian aspects of the peace agreement. He predicted that increased NATO patrols will clear the way for some Serbs to return to their homes, although he said it will take time to restore their confidence in the ability and willingness of the authorities to protect them.

Bildt said the blame for the arson and looting belongs to the Serbian and Muslim authorities for failing to protect Serbian residents. But the decision to increase NATO patrols was a tacit acknowledgment of a failure of law and order and amounted to a rebuke to peacekeepers for failing to prevent earlier bouts of arson and looting.

All factions renewed their pledges to allow refugees to return to their homes, although it was not clear how that can be brought about.

In perhaps the most dramatic outcome of the meeting, Tudjman and Milosevic agreed, for the first time, to turn over suspected war criminals to the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague.

Tudjman said Gen. Tihomir Blaskic, under indictment for war crimes committed in 1993, will be turned over.

Milosevic agreed to surrender Radoslav Kremenovic and Drazen Erdemovic, suspected of participating in mass killings near Srebrenica in July. The two men, who have admitted their role in the massacres in television interviews, are being held in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and the rump Yugoslavia. The tribunal wants them for questioning, although they are not under indictment.

The agreement calls for the three men to be sent to The Hague before the end of the month.

Although it was the first time that any of the factions in the conflict have agreed to permit prosecution of members of their ethnic groups, the action did not affect the individuals indicted on war crimes charges: Radovan Karadzic, the self-styled president of the Bosnian Serbs, and Gen. Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb military commander.

All three factions also agreed to release all remaining prisoners by the end of the month. Although the Dayton accord required the release of all prisoners in January, the International Committee of the Red Cross says 219 are still jailed.

The Geneva meeting followed a similar session last month in Rome. Foreign ministers of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia will meet Saturday in Moscow with Christopher and the foreign ministers of the other four Contact Group countries--Russia, Britain, France and Germany.

In a related development, leaders of the 2-year-old Muslim-Croat federation adopted a 12-point program designed to integrate the divided Bosnian city of Mostar and to merge separate Muslim and Croatian institutions.

In a communique, federation leaders said they were “deeply concerned” about their failure to foster Muslim-Croat cooperation.

“Internal disagreements and diverging views concerning the ultimate shape of the federation are putting at risk this critical building block for peace,” the communique said.

Before starting his meetings with the Balkan leaders, Christopher met with delegates to the 38-nation Conference on Disarmament, urging them to complete a comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty by this summer. He said the talks produced progress but did not resolve all issues.