Serb Offer of Bail Help Fails to Entice Trial Suspects to Surrender

Nervous about the political fallout in Yugoslavia of arresting the group of senior officials who were indicted with Slobodan Milosevic but are still living freely in Belgrade, the Serbian government is offering to help them get bail from the Hague, provided they surrender voluntarily.

In a move that could enormously complicate Mr Milosevic's trial, Belgrade may open its own archives to show that Croatian and Bosnian leaders in the former Yugoslavia also caused the wars and crimes that followed, officials say.

Vladan Batic, the Serbian republic's justice minister, told parliament that the government would give the international war crimes tribunal a guarantee that all bailed indictees would return for their trial.

"Everybody who has been indicted and who surrenders will have the Serbian government's guarantees," he told parliament.

The four men include Milan Milutinovic, the Serbian president, as well as army and police ministers in charge of the Kosovo campaign in 1999. They were all indicted at the same time as Mr Milosevic but were not arrested when he was seized in his Belgrade home last March.

The move is another sign that the government is trying to collaborate with the international tribunal while not showing too much enthusiasm because of the widespread view here that the court is biased against Serbs.

If the four men do not give up voluntarily, the government has hinted that it will be forced to arrest some of them by the end of next month. Mr Milutinovic, however, has immunity while he remains president.

Serbia is under strong pressure from Washington to act. President George Bush has to certify to Congress by March 31 that Serbia is working with the Hague, or the republic will face a cut in aid.

Although the Hague prosecutors claim Mr Milosevic was only interested in personal power, ministers here are determined not to let his case become a trial of Serbia.

Yugoslavia's president, Vojislav Kostunica, is now moving towards a selective opening of the archives of the Milosevic era, including those of the army. Opening the records would be an important strategic decision. The Hague's prosecutors have been conspicuously short of incriminating documents, or "smoking guns", and have had to rely largely on eyewitnesses in most of their cases so far.

But it could also make their work harder by blurring the division between Mr Milosevic's role as a legitimate defender of Serb interests and his use of excessive force and terror.

The Serbian government's offer of bail guarantees for indictees has a precedent. Biljana Plavsic, the hardline nationalist who is charged with atrocities in Bosnia alongside the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is still on the run, gave herself up more than a year ago.

After several months in detention at the Hague court's prison in Scheveningen, she was allowed out and now lives in Belgradeunder strict conditions.

Another Serb who gave himself up recently is Admiral Miodrag Jokic, indicted for the shelling of the Adriatic port city of Dubrovnik. In a sign of how closely-woven most of the Serb political elite was with Mr Milosevic, including ministers in the current government, Adm Jokic is a senior official in New Democracy, one of the parties in the ruling coalition. "He should be released on bail any day now," Mr Batic said yesterday.

Despite the government's offer of help, none of the four main indictees is taking the bait. Dragoljub Ojdanic, former Yugoslav defence minister, refused to surrender. "I am a soldier and it was my duty to defend the state and people from aggression. All the orders I issued were in accordance with the rules of war," he said yesterday.

Nikola Sainovic, a former deputy prime minister who was put in charge of Kosovo by Mr Milosevic, also issued a defiant statement. Still an MP, he did not turn up in parliament and put his refusal in writing. "He is probably watching the trial on television," a Socialist party official said.