Justice for Milosevic Is Owed

Western governments have given Yugoslavia’s new leadership widespread support, quietly helping during elections last fall, lifting economic sanctions against Belgrade and bestowing millions of dollars in aid. The aim was to get post-Milosevic Yugoslavia back on its feet and help it return to the world community.

The least expected in return was that Yugoslavia’s new president, Vojislav Kostunica, would honor commitments to international institutions and hand over former President Slobodan Milosevic and other indicted suspects to the United Nations war crimes tribunal. Kostunica, however, refuses to cooperate with The Hague court, playing on nationalist sentiment opposed to the “collective punishment” of the Serbs and hiding behind a constitutional prohibition against extradition. He and others in his coalition want Milosevic to be prosecuted by a Yugoslav court, and only for his numerous financial crimes.

Kostunica’s arguments may appeal to extreme nationalists, but polls show most Serbs feel the deposed dictator must answer not only for corruption and abuse of power but for his war crimes as well if Serbia is to make a clean break from its past. Some members of Kostunica’s ruling coalition, including Serbia’s Justice Minister Vladan Batic, acknowledge the inevitability of surrendering Milosevic and others indicted for war crimes, and the sooner the government complies the better.

U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte is not unmindful of the political risks of pushing Yugoslavia’s would-be reformers too far. But, while willing to strike a deal with Belgrade, including moving the tribunal to Serbia, the court and Western governments insist on cooperation in obtaining documents and arresting suspects. The U.S. government has said it will withhold aid and oppose international development funding for Belgrade if Kostunica doesn’t comply by the end of March. For the West, there can be no normal relations with Serbia without full exposure of the atrocities committed by Milosevic’s regime in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990s and punishment of the chief perpetrators.

Kostunica deserves credit for his cooperation with NATO in patrolling the Kosovo border and responding with restraint to attacks by Kosovo Albanians. But he must comply with U.N. resolutions as well and bring Milosevic to justice.