WASHINGTON – The International War Crimes Tribunal has indicted Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes, a State Department source said last night.
The indictment of Milosevic and a “handful” of other top Serbian leaders will be announced today.
It will deal with “genocide” and “crimes against humanity” in Kosovo, but probably not in Bosnia, the source said.
NATO jets yesterday blasted Milosevic’s villa near Belgrade for the second straight day, but his whereabouts weren’t known.
Milosevic could be charged with other war crimes later, including those committed under his orders in Bosnia and Croatia.
“There’s more to come,” the source said.
Supporters of the ethnic Albanians who have been terrorized by Milosevic’s marauding troops in Kosovo cheered the news. An untold number of Kosovars have been executed, raped, robbed and kicked out of their homes since the war started March 24.
Military analysts warned that an indictment could drag out the war – and might lead to an earlier use of ground troops – because Milosevic probably won’t agree to a peace deal with NATO if he faces jail.
“His own well-being is very high up on the list of things he cares about,” said Balkans analyst Tomas Valasek.
President Clinton was playing golf on his five-day vacation in Florida and was unavailable for comment. White House national security spokesman David Leavy declined to discuss the matter.
Officials at the White House, State Department and Pentagon would not confirm the indictment and insisted U.S. officials didn’t try to influence the tribunal.
Russian Ambassador Sergey Lavrov said it would be “counterproductive” to indict Milosevic while his envoys are trying to broker a peace deal. Prosecutors at the tribunal have interviewed Kosovo refugees about Milosevic’s campaign of ethnic cleansing for several weeks, and State Department spokesman James Rubin said last night the United States has provided the tribunal with intelligence reports for its investigation.
The Times of London reported Clinton is considering sending up to 90,000 American troops for combat if there’s no peace deal in the next three weeks. The report didn’t say Clinton has endorsed the idea.
But it said U.S. and British officials are quietly preparing contingency plans for an operation involving about 160,000 ground troops – far more than the 50,000 troops being sent for a possible peace mission.
Experts said ground troops might be called if Milosevic – once he’s branded a war criminal – digs in his heels and refuses to relent to the air campaign.
Paul Risely, a spokesman for the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, said prosecutors have collected “evidence of war crimes on a massive scale” and “will have a lot of information to back up the charges.”
The tribunal’s chief prosecutor, Louise Arbour, said she had an “important announcement” to make this morning but wouldn’t confirm it was Milosevic’s indictment. The tribunal is customarily mum until the official announcement.
It’s unclear how the Serbian leader could be brought to justice without officers from NATO or the United Nations to arrest him.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said the indictment “shows the war crimes tribunal means business.”
On the Senate floor, Specter said “there is an abundance of evidence of atrocities and mass murders” and “those crimes should not go unpunished.”