Kostunica snubs war crimes head


The Yugoslav leadership says Del Ponte is not senior enough to meet Kostunica

ATHENS, Greece -- Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica says he will be too busy to meet the U.N. war crimes tribunal's chief prosecutor when she visits Belgrade later this month.

"On January 19 I will be in Sarajevo," he said on Tuesday during a visit to Greece.

Carla Del Ponte has said that next week she wants to hand Kostunica a list of indictments of war crimes suspects such as former president Slobodan Milosevic believed to be living in Yugoslavia.

"At an appropriate time we will deal with this issue and then we will find a way for Carla del Ponte to be informed about anything concerning the Hague.

"I believe there are still some legal shortcomings in the make-up of the court and I will raise this issue with del Ponte when she comes again," Kostunica said.

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Del Ponte has said she hoped to meet Kostunica, but the deputy president of the Democratic Party of Serbia, Aleksandar Popovic, said she did not have the stature to warrant a meeting.

"Mr Kostunica can receive presidents of state and prime ministers and Madame del Ponte is neither one nor the other. She is not even a foreign minister of a country or an ambassador who brings accreditations," Popovic told B92 radio.

"Mr Kostunica's day has 24 hours and Madame del Ponte is not high enough in some hierarchy for Mr Kostunica to receive her."

Kostunica has so far refused to hand over his predecessor, Slobodan Milosevic, to the tribunal for alleged war crimes against ethnic Albanians in the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict.

Croat controversy

Del Ponte says Yugoslavia is obliged to extradite Milosevic, although Belgrade would prefer trying Milosevic at home and has mentioned potential charges of corruption and vote-rigging, rather than war crimes.

Del Ponte, who is in Zagreb for talks with Croatian leaders, said: "I hope that President Kostunica will find some time to meet me.

"He is meeting a lot of people, I don't think that he won't find time to meet the prosecutor of the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia)."

In a separate development, del Ponte's office said it was withdrawing an invitation to Croatia's army chief of staff to be questioned on his role in Croatia's 1991-95 war of independence from Yugoslavia.

The letter of invitation had not been made public but was widely seen as implying that General Petar Stipetic was to be interviewed as a potential suspect and not a witness, causing political controversy in Croatia.

Stipetic is widely regarded as a professional soldier whose name has not been linked by the media or human rights groups with any of the atrocities committed during the war.

"We will withdraw our invitation and will let General Stipetic himself decide if he will be interviewed or not," Del Ponte said.

Del Ponte said Stipetic had approached her office with a proposal to talk about his role in the war.

Reuters contributed to this report.