Serbia Says War Crimes Suspects to Face Arrest

Serbia could begin arresting war crimes suspects within days, its prime minister said Friday, stressing that it has little choice if it wants to avoid punishing sanctions and international isolation.

The U.S. Congress has given Yugoslavia until Sunday to cooperate with the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague or risk losing $120 million in financial aid. Serbia is the main Yugoslav republic.

“If we do not cooperate, we could face international isolation and U.S. sanctions, literally within days,” Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic warned.

Arrests, he said, could come “within three to four days,” sending a signal to the 15 suspects hiding in Serbia that they no longer can expect to find safe haven there.

The suspects include one of the tribunal’s most-wanted fugitives: Gen. Ratko Mladic, the wartime military leader of the Bosnian Serbs. He was indicted on a charge of genocide in 1995 along with former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

Vladan Batic, Serbia’s justice minister, said Friday that the republic’s police were ready to make arrests.

But Batic also sent an open letter to the U.N. Security Council and U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanding that ethnic Albanian militants who committed atrocities against Serbs in Kosovo, a Serbian province, also be indicted for war crimes.

Serbian authorities have long been criticized for their refusal to cooperate with the tribunal, which many in Belgrade see as anti-Serb.

That attitude must end, Djindjic warned, or Yugoslavia will forfeit “millions of dollars, the International Monetary Fund, standby deals, the World Bank . . . everything that has to do with European integration.”