Milosevic allies back Serb coalition
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Bosnian Serb ex-leader Radovan Karadzic living in Belgrade, says chief U.N. prosecutor Carla del Ponte.
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BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro (Reuters) -- A minority government backed by allies of ex-leader Slobodan Milosevic took office in Serbia Wednesday and felt immediate western pressure to deliver war crimes suspects to The Hague tribunal.
As parliament voted in the conservative-led coalition of Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica, a senior U.S. official voiced concern about his commitment to cooperate with the U.N. court -- a key condition for aid and access to loans.
NATO warned Belgrade's ambition for formal ties with the defense alliance could be in jeopardy.
Kostunica, a self-styled moderate nationalist who helped topple Milosevic in 2000, has often accused the tribunal of bias against Serbs. Outlining his policies to parliament Tuesday, he said extraditions to the tribunal would not be a priority and said Serb suspects should be tried at home.
"We are very concerned with those recent statements coming from Belgrade," Pierre-Richard Prosper, U.S. ambassador-at-large for war crimes, said in Sarajevo. "Looks like the government is in the process of making a U-turn and this is not helpful."
Under U.S. legislation, Washington may sever funding if Belgrade fails to show it is cooperating with The Hague by a March 31 deadline, including "making all practicable efforts" to arrest wartime Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic.
A NATO official in Brussels said Belgrade must cooperate fully with the war crimes tribunal. "If that is not forthcoming then it will make membership in Partnership for Peace very difficult indeed," he said.
Serbia asked to join NATO's Partnership for Peace -- the alliance's forum for security cooperation with non-members -- last June, four years after NATO warplanes bombed it for 11 weeks to halt repression of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.
Kostunica's coalition links his Democratic Party of Serbia with liberals and monarchists. It was approved by a vote of 130 to 113 in the 250-seat legislature, more than two months after December's inconclusive general election.
Western alarm
Western powers fear the government's dependence on Milosevic's Socialists will further delay stalled reforms in impoverished Serbia.
Milosevic is on trial for war crimes at The Hague.
The Socialists have already warned they would veto the handover of indictees such as Mladic, who chief U.N. prosecutor Carla del Ponte says is hiding in Serbia. Serbian officials say they have no evidence of this.
The ultra-nationalist Radical Party, which came first in the December 28 election on the back of discontent with three years of economic and political change, voted against the government.
Its deputies wore badges with the picture of party leader Vojislav Seselj, another war crimes suspect at The Hague.
Balkan expert Gerald Knaus of the European Stability Initiative think-tank warned Serbia risked isolation if it failed to cooperate with the tribunal and said this could undermine the government's reform agenda and even bring it down.
"This issue could do most damage to the internal cohesion of the government and relations with the outside world," he said.
Another controversial proposal from Kostunica was the "division or canonization" of U.N.-run Kosovo to protect Serbs living there. The United Nations and Kosovo Albanian leaders said that was a non-starter.
In one move likely to please the West and would-be foreign investors, Kostunica named two leading economic liberals, Miroljub Labus and Mladjan Dinkic, as deputy prime minister and finance minister respectively.
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Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
