Kostunica Rejects Quick Hand-Over of Milosevic

President Vojislav Kostunica on Tuesday sharply rejected international pressure on Yugoslavia to quickly deliver arrested former President Slobodan Milosevic to a U.N. war crimes tribunal.

Kostunica told a news conference here that Yugoslavia is willing to cooperate with the tribunal to some degree but will not subordinate its national dignity for “a handful of dollars” in aid by handing the former president over to the panel in The Hague.

However, Kostunica also said the decision on extradition does not lie within his limited authority as president. That power ultimately belongs with the Yugoslav parliament, which would need to pass a law allowing extradition to The Hague, and the government of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s main republic, which has custody of Milosevic.

In a further ratcheting up of pressure against Milosevic and his dwindling number of supporters, Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic told reporters in Vienna that in addition to the corruption charges for which the former president was arrested Sunday, “we have indications that Milosevic was also involved in more serious crimes that can carry the death sentence.”

“We need evidence, and when we have it, then we will bring criminal charges,” Mihajlovic said. “It is historically important that Milosevic is first put on trial in Serbia. . . . Otherwise, he could become a legend, and the Serbs might create another false myth.”

Mihajlovic did not elaborate on the suspected capital crimes. But other officials have said investigators are looking for a link between Milosevic and the 1999 deaths of four people in an assassination attempt aimed at opposition leader Vuk Draskovic, the disappearance last year of former Serbian President Ivan Stambolic and the 1999 slaying of journalist Slavko Curuvija.

Mihajlovic also said, jokingly, that Milosevic might prefer to be sent to The Hague, which is not empowered to impose capital punishment.

A Belgrade court Tuesday rejected Milosevic’s appeal that he be freed pending trial.

Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia responded with an announcement that if the former president is not released from jail by Friday, the party will launch street protests starting the next day. That could set the stage for a public test of how much popularity Milosevic retains.

Investigators looking into the corruption charges against Milosevic and alleged co-conspirators spent about six hours Tuesday questioning former customs chief Mihalj Kertes, one of the suspects in an alleged theft of at least $100 million in state funds, according to Toma Fila, the former president’s lawyer.

Cedomir Jovanovic, a leader in the ruling coalition who played the key role in negotiating Milosevic’s predawn surrender Sunday after a 40-hour standoff with police, told a news conference Tuesday that the former president--who was armed with a handgun during the tense negotiations--had been ready to die fighting.

“He made it clear [that] imprisonment was unacceptable to him and that that’s why he decided a fight would be the only way out,” Jovanovic said. “He was aware he could not have won against the police force but was ready to put himself out of his own misery.”

Jovanovic said that during the negotiations, he promised Milosevic “on behalf of the state” that the former president would not be taken directly to the airport and sent to The Hague but rather would be imprisoned here in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital.

At his Tuesday news conference, Kostunica declared that “Milosevic stands primarily responsible before his own nation. . . . The Hague is not in our thoughts at the moment, especially not in my thoughts at all, with all the other problems occupying this country.”

Kostunica charged that the war crimes tribunal was pursuing “selective justice” by failing to indict leaders of nations that broke away from the Yugoslav federation during the nation’s bloody disintegration in the 1990s--”and even leaders of NATO” for the alliance’s 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

Kostunica also sharply criticized the handling of Milosevic’s weekend arrest by police responsible to the government of Serbia. The operation was “clumsy and not well thought out,” he said.

Serbia’s government is headed by Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, who played a key role in ordering the arrest. A rivalry between Kostunica and Djindjic has become increasingly open in recent weeks.

Kostunica, who was in Switzerland on Friday evening when the arrest attempt began, also said he had not been properly informed in advance of the plans to seize Milosevic.

“The police action got off to a very uncoordinated start and without enough reports,” he said. “I got the first written report on [Saturday morning] at around 8 a.m.”

The arrest came as Yugoslavia neared a Saturday night deadline set by the U.S. Congress to cooperate with the war crimes tribunal or face a cutoff of about $50 million in U.S. aid.

In another development Tuesday, Serbian President Milan Milutinovic resigned as deputy leader of the Socialist Party while retaining his government position. He also has been indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

As president of Serbia, Milutinovic could try to pardon Milosevic, at least for crimes committed under the republic’s laws, but analysts differ over the legal technicalities and practical realities that would affect any such effort. Some observers Tuesday linked Milutinovic’s resignation from his party post to pressure from within the party to try to use his pardoning powers on behalf of Milosevic or other officials of the former regime.

“The party, in the form of an ultimatum, demanded that I put myself above the constitution and the law . . . [and] pressure on me continues,” Milutinovic said in a written statement, without clarification.