BELGRADE, Serbia, Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindic called on war-crimes indictees in his part of Yugoslavia to voluntarily surrender to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
"My message is: instead of hiding behind the nation, why those who are on the lists of indictees and who were the highest officials of the state not go and lift that burden from the nation," Djindic said to a group of Serbian media editors on Sunday.
Djindic also said that a law on cooperation with the tribunal should be adopted on the federal level and not, as Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica wants, by Serbia.
"If they are not ready to do so (go to the tribunal), then the question poses itself whether at all we should take account of their interests," he said. "If these people are honorable people, they will go of their own free will, but if they are not, why should we care much whether they will end up in The Hague or not."
Former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic and Gen. Pavle Strugar, who commanded the 1991 Yugoslav military operations against the Croatian seaside town of Dubrovnik, were among those indicted as war criminals, but The Hague tribunal freed them until trial after they surrendered to it voluntarily.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has indicted several top Yugoslav officials, including former President Slobodan Milosevic, for their role in atrocities committed during the break up of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
