Yugoslav Leader, U.N. Prosecutor to Meet After All

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica said Thursday that he will meet with chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte when she visits here next week.

The president’s change of heart is likely to please Western governments, but they may be alarmed that he also suggested he will make public any secret indictments that Del Ponte hands over to him from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. The prosecutor will begin a three-day visit to Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia and its main republic, Serbia, on Tuesday.

Kostunica also defended his weekend meeting with his predecessor, Slobodan Milosevic, who has been indicted by the tribunal on charges of war crimes in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic.

“I did not intend to receive [Del Ponte] because I was too busy . . . [and] there are many more competent people to deal with this issue,” Kostunica said in Belgrade.

“There are several things which influenced me to change the decision,” he said.

He said he now wanted to discuss, among other things, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s use of depleted uranium in its 1999 air war against Yugoslavia and the tribunal’s use of sealed indictments.