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The High Representative, Wolfgang Petritsch, today described the arrest of Slobodan Milosevic as very positive but urged that the former Yugoslav leader must be handed over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal (ICTY) in The Hague to answer charges of crimes against humanity.
The current U.N. indictment covers the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians from their homes and the horrific Kosovo massacres of Racak, Velika Krusa and others which led to NATO intervention in March 1999. The tribunal's Chief Prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, is seeking to widen the indictment to include crimes committed in BiH. "I remember seeing Milosevic only hours before the NATO airstrikes began but all our mediation efforts were to no avail and Milosevic insisted on starting his fourth Balkan war," the High Representative said. "My work now in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the country which suffered most terribly under outside interference from Milosevic, has shown how important it is that individuals like Milosevic do not escape justice at the The Hague. "The arrest of Milosevic by the Belgrade authorities is a very positive move and demonstrates an important commitment to the rule of law, an essential precondition for a lasting peace in southeastern Europe. The Belgrade authorities' arrest of Milosevic this weekend moves a very long way down the path to peace and stability in the region. Milosevic's arrest demonstrates to all in the region that nobody is above the law. That goes above all for the Bosnian Serbs' wartime leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, who are indicted by the U.N. tribunal on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. I am personally involved in the creation of a cemetery for the victims of the Srebrenica massacre but know the families of the victims will not find any peace until the perpetrators of these terrible killings are brought to account for their evil actions. BiH citizens cannot concentrate fully on their future until they have dealt with their past."
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