World

Aid Cut Over War Crime Suspects

April 1, 2004 / 12:18 PM EST / CBS/AP

Secretary of State Colin Powell suspended $25 million in assistance to Serbia-Montenegro on Wednesday for failing to hand over war crime suspects to the international tribunal at the Hague.

U.S. assistance to Serbia-Montenegro, the successor state to Yugoslavia, has been contingent on cooperation with that Hague tribunal.

State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli made the announcement less than 12 hours ahead of a deadline. For assistance to continue, the administration would have had to certify cooperation.

Ereli said that about $100 million for Serbia-Montenegro has been appropriated for the current fiscal year. Of that amount, he said, $43 million has been spent.

Exempt from the aid cutoff are humanitarian assistance, funds to promote democracy in municipalities and for Kosovo. Ereli said about $25 million is affected by the cutoff.

He added that about 16 war crimes suspects who have not yet been turned over to the tribunal spend the preponderance of their time in Serbia-Montenegro.

Of these, the best known is former Bosnian Serb army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic.

He was indicted by the U.N. court for genocide over the deaths of about 8,000 men and boys in the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995.

Another is Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb wartime leader. Some of the other wanted war crimes suspects with ties to Serbia include:

Goran Borovnica is accused of ordering murders when he and other Serb forces seized Bosnian Muslims and Serbs in the Kozarac area in May 1992.

Gojko Jankovic and Dragan Zelenovic were allegedly military and paramilitary leaders in the town of Foca in April 1992 when "military police accompanied by local and non-local soldiers started arresting Muslim and Croat inhabitants, " according to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. During the arrests many civilians were killed, beaten or subjected to sexual assault. "

Vladimir Kovacevic is wanted for his role as a commander of the Yugoslav People's Army, which allegedly killed civilians during the siege of Dubrovnik in December 1991.

Dragomir Milosevic is wanted to his alleged role as as the commander of units that shelled and sniped people in Sarajevo.

Savo Todovic allegedly was the deputy commander of a Serb prison where he "was in charge of selecting detainees for killings, beatings, interrogations, forced labor, solitary confinement and exchanges."

Vinko Pandurevic, Ljubomir Borovcanin, Vujadin Popovic, Drago Nikolic and Ljubisa Beara are wanted for alleged roles in the Srebrenica massacre.

Nebojsa Pavkovic, Vladimir Lazarevic, Vlastimir Djordjevic and Sreten Lukic are accused of a role in a campaign that "a deliberate and widespread or systematic manner, forcibly expelled and internally displaced hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians."