WAR CRIMES PANEL SEEKS NATO AID ON MILOSEVIC

The International Herald Tribune, April 15, 1999

by Marlise Simons

The Hague. Prosecutors at the international war crimes tribunal have built a strong case to indict President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia, diplomats and lawyers close to the Tribunal say. But they say the prosecutors are depending on NATO governments for crucial links that they need to bolster their case.

The Tribunal still refuses to confirm officially that it is investigating Mr. Milosevic. But prosecutors concede that they have been pursuing the Yugoslav leadership.

"It is right to say that our focus is at the top end", said Graham Blewitt, the deputy prosecutor of the Tribunal, which was set up by the United Nations in 1993. The diplomats say Tribunal investigators have focused on Mr. Milosevic for almost a year.

As reports of Yugoslav forces killing and terrorizing ethnic Albanians have grown, the court has been inundated with questions about when it will indict Mr. Milosevic on war crimes charges.

Officials at the tribunal have responded with frustration, saying they have been delayed because NATO member countries have been slow to provide vital information about the inner workings of the Yugoslav political and military command.

Investigators say the issue is not to collect evidence of more crimes in Kosovo. Rather, they argue, they need to demonstrate what orders were given, who was involved and what knowledge commanders had of crimes committed by subordinates.

"Of course we have a lot of evidence of crime in Kosovo", Mr. Blewitt said. "We can now indict people in the chain of command. But it's a question of what level. We could go faster if we had the right evidence about the top."

The chief prosecutor, Louise Arbour, will visit NATO headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday to ask the allies for greater cooperation in sharing their intelligence. The information she needs is likely to be highly classified and includes interceptions of radio, telephone or computer communications, which NATO countries have so far withheld.

NATO and British and American officials have said they have information that they will give the Tribunal.

"But we're not seeing the goods", Mr. Blewitt said. "We're not getting anywhere near what we're expecting."

Tribunal officials said the information would shore up the cases they were building. "We want an indictment only when it will result in a conviction", Mr. Blewitt said.

Making the link between Mr. Milosevic and the reported brutal action of hic forces in Kosovo appears simple enough: he is the Yugoslav head of state and commander in chief of the armed forces, and Kosovo, a Serbian province, is part of Yugoslavia.

From a legal point of vue, tribunal investigators say, it is easier to hold Mr. Milosevic accountable now than during the war in Bosnia, which he instigated and backed but from which he took care to keep a formal distance as president of Serbia.

Mr. Milosevic has shown himself very adept at avoiding paper trails and evading interceptions during the war that broke up Yugoslavia, specialists say.

He can also answer some of the prosecution charges. For example, one investigator said, in the case of Kosovo, Mr. Milosevic can produce a written order saying that all troops in the Yugoslav Army must behave in accordance with the law and that any offenses against civilians or criminal acts will be punished severely.

Prosecutors said they needed information that not only supported an indictment but could also be used in court.

"In the past we have been given leads and intelligence, and then we go back to the source and say we'd like to use this in the courtroom", Mr. Blewitt said. "Then they say no, because they do not want to expose their intelligence-gathering methods or compromise their sources".

Part of the debate outside the Tribunal is whether NATO allies want to see Mr. Milosevic indicted at this point, since it could be difficult to negociate with him once he was formally charged as a war criminal suspect.

Tribunal officials said they had not been subjected to pressure by governments to indict senior Yugoslav officials or to withhold indictments. Pressure has come from public opinion and from questions asked by the press, they said.

"There seems to be an expectation that something is going to happen right now", Mr. Blewitt said.

That expectation may also exist in Yugoslavia. For three weeks the Yugoslav Embassy in The Hague has had no dealings with the Tribunal, refusing to accept letters, documents and even telephone calls, an official said.