Extradition Plan Splits Yugoslavia

Warning that Yugoslavia’s future is at stake, President Vojislav Kostunica on Tuesday asked a Montenegrin faction to reconsider its opposition to a law that would allow Slobodan Milosevic’s extradition to a U.N. war crimes tribunal.

The Serbian interior minister, meanwhile, said investigators have begun exhuming another mass grave as part of an inquiry into allegations that the ousted president covered up atrocities. Two other suspected grave sites also are being investigated, Dusan Mihajlovic said.

Milosevic is in a Belgrade prison pending investigations of corruption and abuse of power during his 13-year rule. The U.N. tribunal in The Hague wants to try him for war crimes against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic.

Belgrade has been working on a draft law that would allow the extradition of war crimes suspects. But talks between government members from Serbia and Montenegro, Yugoslavia’s other republic, have failed to produce an agreement.

Montenegro’s Socialist People’s Party was once allied with Milosevic but joined Kostunica’s government after Milosevic’s ouster in October. The party opposes the extradition of Yugoslav citizens to the tribunal.

Failure to reach an agreement on the draft law allowing such extradition could unravel the joint government.

Kostunica’s office issued a statement Tuesday asking the Montenegrins to reconsider.

Their consent is crucial to the law’s passage, since the Kostunica-led faction does not have a majority without them.

The United States and its partners have tied further financial aid to Yugoslav cooperation with the U.N. tribunal.