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Sunday Morning News

Milosevic's Arrest Greeted With Relief, Enthusiasm in Europe

Aired April 1, 2001 - 8:04 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: News of Milosevic's arrest has been greeted with relief in some parts of Europe, dismay in others. Still uncertain is how or when the International War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague might take center stage in the unfolding drama.

CNN's Christiane Amanpour joins us from London with more on this. Hello, Christiane.

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, well, indeed, a sort of Keystone cops and gangsters to what has been a 10-year nightmare for Serbia, for the Balkan region, and indeed, for the officials of the United States and Europe and other parts of the world who had to try to contain this over the past 10 years.

Now, there's a real milestone toward ending that nightmare, and to that end, in fact, the appreciation and reaction from all over Europe has been unanimously positive, from all over Western Europe, from the European Union, from NATO. The only state with some reservations or muted comment has been Russia.

But apart from that, the president of France, the foreign ministers of Britain and Italy and Germany, the leaders of the European Union and all the others saying that this is an important step towards bringing Slobodan Milosevic to book for the crimes that he committed, they say, in the name of the Serbian people.

Now, a very important reaction also from the Hague, the International War Crimes Tribunal. The spokesman for the chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, said that this is an extremely positive step, and that it should facilitate the transfer of Slobodan Milosevic to the War Crimes Tribunal to face an indictment that exists on charges of crimes against humanity for actions in the Kosovo war and perhaps further indictments that the tribunal is preparing on actions stemming from the wars in Bosnia and Croatia.

What appears clear is that Slobodan Milosevic, at the age of 59, is now faced with a future of courtrooms and trials and lawyers and jail cells. This really does, according to all officials and all observers, spell the end of his political career, and the end of his career as a major player on the international state, and many people are looking towards the end of this stand-off as yet another example of what Milosevic seemed to have mastered over the past 10 years, and that was the art of the untenable position. Whether it was in negotiating ends to the wars that he started and lost, whether it was in agreeing finally to resign after losing an election, or finally, in the early hours of this morning, to surrender, he has always clung stubbornly to a no position until finally forced to bow to the inevitable, and many people now are saying this simply is a positive sign for Serbia and a way out of a long national nightmare -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: Christiane, Milosevic still has this large group of loyalist, you know, to a man who'd been referred to as this Balkans Butcher. What is the mindset behind these loyalists? Why do they still support him?

AMANPOUR: Well, I think we have to be very clear. You know, there's been a lot of, I think, sort of disinformation about the number of, quote, "loyalists" that he still has. Look, in the last year or so, the so-called loyalist have kicked him out of power. There was an election in Serbia last fall, and he was overwhelmingly rejected as president of that region.

He then resigned. Everybody predicted that there were going to be masses in the streets and great opposition to all of this, and there wasn't. In fact, there was the contrary. In the last couple of weeks, we've seen a very important poll conducted in Belgrade by a political newspaper saying that more than half the Yugoslav and Serbian people polled said that he should be transferred to the Hague.

So, the mystique of Milosevic has all but disappeared, and I think what happening in front of his house during these 24 hours or more of stand-off over this weekend was indicative of how far he has plummeted in the opinion of the people who used to rally around him. There were only a couple of hundred people so-called defending him, and it simply is a completely different situation than it was when he held that position of power over the last several years in the Balkans.

And obviously, he still is important in the Socialist Party, but even the Socialist Party, which he once headed, was instrumental in negotiating his surrender over this weekend, and most people there understand that the future of Serbia is not one to which Milosevic is tied. That has simply brought Serbia and Yugoslavia into the doldrums, if you like, over the last 10 years and I think that is becoming increasingly clear.

And certainly, Serbian authorities would like to try him on domestic charges in order to criminalize him in the eyes of the Serbian people, and thus make it even easier for them to eventually transfer him to the Hague for war crimes charges.

PHILLIPS: Christiane Amanpour, live from London. Thank you so much.

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