Abrupt end to Milosevic extradition talks

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Talks between the United Nations' chief war crimes prosecutor and Yugoslavia's President Vojislav Kostunica have ended abruptly after an apparently heated discussion on calls for the extradition of Slobodan Milosevic.

An arrest warrant for the former Yugoslav leader was re-issued ahead of three days of talks between Carla Del Ponte and the country's new government.

But her meeting with Kostunica -- a staunch critic of the tribunal, based in the Netherlands -- lasted just an hour.

Afterwards Del Ponte hastily walked past reporters, refusing to give a scheduled statement.

Her spokeswoman, Florence Hartmann, said only: "The heat was very warm". She promised Del Ponte would give a "frank" statement on Thursday at the end of her visit to Belgrade -- the first by a war crime prosecutor.

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Kostunica also kept tight-lipped but later issued a statement confirming "deep differences" between the two sides.

The tribunal indicted Milosevic in May 1999 for alleged crimes against humanity in the crackdown he ordered on Kosovo Albanians, which ended after 78 days of NATO airstrikes.

Before meeting Kostunica, Del Ponte told reporters she would press for Milosevic's extradition and was expecting "to discuss co-operation in detail, about how, when and what."

Kostunica, who replaced Milosevic in October following a popular uprising, has repeatedly insisted that domestic laws bar the extradition of Yugoslav nationals to foreign courts.

In his statement after Tuesday's talks he accused the tribunal of wanting to impose "collective guilt on all the Serbs", noting that most of the people the court has indicted are Serbs.

Kostunica has suggested that Milosevic and others could be tried in a Yugoslav court, accused of corruption, vote-rigging, fraud and leading the country into four destructive Balkan wars.

For the new president and his colleagues a lot depends on Del Ponte's visit.

If the Yugoslav government fails to co-operate with the court, based in The Hague, it could lose the international political and financial support it has won since October when Milosevic was ousted.

Yugoslavia was admitted into the U.N. on November 1, 2000, after eight years in the wilderness.

Turning up the pressure ahead of the talks, the U.N. war crimes tribunal on Tuesday ordered Yugoslavia to freeze Milosevic's remaining financial assets.

Yugoslav Central Bank officials have accused the Milosevic regime of stealing more than $4 billion and siphoning it out of the country in bags of cash marked "citizens' savings."

Del Ponte has declined to comment on the estimated amount the former president may have left in Yugoslavia until the tribunal completes investigations. She told the United Nations in November that, "a huge, huge amount of money ... was stolen (from) the Serb population."

In addition to Milosevic, numerous other suspects still live in Yugoslavia, including the president of Serbia, Milan Milutinovic, and the former Bosnian Serb military commander, General Ratko Mladic.

Kostunica initially said he would not meet Del Ponte but changed his mind last week, saying he wanted to discuss NATO's use of depleted uranium munitions in Kosovo and other issues.

Del Ponte also planned to present Yugoslav authorities with new evidence against key suspects in atrocities committed during Balkan wars of the past decade.

A minor pro-Milosevic group, the Patriotic Alliance, called for street protests against Del Ponte's visit.

It said that instead of "putting the entire Serb nation" on trial, The Hague tribunal should charge NATO with "killing the Serb children and destroying the country" during its 1999 airstrikes against Yugoslavia.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.