Soldiers tried for Kosovo war crimes

Milosevic has been indicted for war crimes

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- The Yugoslav army has said that some of its soldiers committed war crimes in Kosovo.

The admission is believed to be the first time the army has specifically mentioned war crimes committed by its soldiers.

Twenty-four Yugoslav soldiers had been prosecuted for war crimes in Kosovo against ethnic Albanians, the army says.

Colonel Svetozar Radisic comments at a news conference referred to the three months of NATO bombing in 1999.

"There were crimes in Kosovo during the aggression against Yugoslavia and proceedings have been launched," Radisic said in comments broadcast by Belgrade's B-92 radio, Associated Press news agency reported.

"We are talking about 24 cases."

Not all of the 24 cases had been concluded, but he did not provide further details.

"Members of the Yugoslav army are always in favour of holding accountable for crimes anyone who might have committed them," he said.

Human rights groups' criticism

Radisic said court proceedings had begun against suspected individuals as soon as it got information about war crimes.

"There were war crimes (committed) in the Yugoslav army during the Kosovo conflict and during the aggression on (Yugoslavia)," he said.

Three soldiers were sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail last November by a military court for killing an elderly ethnic Albanian couple. However, war crimes were not mentioned in the verdict, which prompted criticism from some human rights groups.

Thousands of ethnic Albanians are thought to have been killed during the Serb crackdown, while hundreds of thousands of civilians were driven from their homes.

The NATO bombing eventually forced the Yugoslav army and the Serb police to withdraw from the province.

Kosovo, while remaining part of Yugoslavia with the dominant republic Serbia, has been run by the U.N. and NATO since June 1999.

The U.N. war crimes court has indicted Yugoslavia's former president Slobodan Milosevic and his four top associates in connection with atrocities committed in Kosovo.

Yugoslavia's new leadership has been reluctant to extradite Milosevic and other war crimes suspects to The Hague court, insisting they should be tried at home.

Milosevic was arrested on April 1 on domestic corruption charges.

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International war crimes tribunal

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