Djindjic hopes for Belgrade trials

Djindjic: Difficulties with Serb justice system

SALZBURG, Austria -- Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic has said he hopes future war crimes trials can be held in Belgrade.

Djindjic, who arranged last week's extradition of former president Slobodan Milosevic to The Hague, emphasised that Serbia would continue to co-operate with the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia but expressed a wish for domestic trials where possible.

"I hope that further cases, including people who are not on the list but against whom there are justified suspicions of involvement in war crimes ... that we will have these trials in Belgrade soon," Djindjic was quoted as saying by Reuters.

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Speaking on the sidelines of the European Economic Summit in the Austrian city of Salzburg, Djindic said that where justice took place was not the most important question, Reuters reported.

"Whether someone appears in court in Belgrade or The Hague or somewhere else is a technical question. Everyone has the same interest in bringing the guilty to justice."

He did however acknowledge the problems of an unreformed legal system stacked with Milosevic-era appointees.

"We have difficulties with the justice system in Serbia, more than we expected. I believe that in the most difficult cases such as that of Milosevic we are simply not in a position to organise a trial in Belgrade."

Back in Belgrade Serbian Justice Minister Vladan Batic on Monday told a news conference that he hoped Milosevic's handover would take the pressure off handing over more suspects.

"I hope that this gesture will allow us to ask The Hague Tribunal to let us put the other indictees on trial at home," Reuters quoted him as saying.

But immediately after Milosevic's extradition the United States -- which had threatened to withhold aid for non-cooperation -- said it expected other indictees such as Serbian President Milan Milutinovic to follow.

Djindjic brushed off the political turmoil that saw Yugoslav Prime Minister Zoran Zizic and his Montenegrin allies in the federal government resign in protest at Milosevic's extradition to the U.N. war crimes' tribunal.

The government's collapse was no more important than a "soccer game," he said in Salzburg, according to the Associated Press

The former leader is to face his accusers for the first time on Tuesday, when he is expected to plead not guilty to charges of crimes against humanity for Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999.

On Wednesday Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Mladen Ivanic is due to travel to The Hague for talks with U.N. War Crimes Tribunal President Claude Jorda and chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte.

Florence Hartmann, spokeswoman for the tribunal prosecutor's office, told the Bosnian Serb news agency Srna that currently "there was no cooperation of the Serb republic with The Hague tribunal but only a dialogue."

The tribunal says that 26 out of 37 indicted war crimes suspects are hiding in Bosnian Serb territory, with the two most wanted being wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic.