Could Pave the Way for
War Crime Suspect Arrests
BRUSSELS, May 9 (Reuters) — NATO and the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal finally agreed on Thursday on terms of the alliance's peace mission in Bosnia. The Memorandum of Understanding, under negotiation for months between the 32-nation NATO-led peace Implementation Force (IFOR) and the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia, sets down how suspects who fall into the hands of peace keepers will be handed over to the tribunal. It also lays out the terms under which IFOR will help investigators of suspected mass graves."It basically codifies what has been happening in practice," a spokesman for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said. "It covers the transport of war criminals and the provision of a secure environment for tribunal investigators," he added.
IFOR troops provided the transport and protection in February when tribunal investigators whisked Bosnian Serb General Djordje Djukic and Colonel Aleksa Krsmanovic from jail in Sarajevo to Scheveningen prison in The Hague. They are also providing security for investigators looking into the reported massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslims after Bosnian Serb soldiers overran the so-called safe haven of Srebrenica last July — a move that led to the NATO bombing campaign and ultimately to last December's Dayton peace deal.
The NATO spokesman was unable to explain why, if the memorandum of understanding is a simple codification of actions already being undertaken, it had taken so long to agree. Western military sources noted that while NATO had led the negotiations with the tribunal and signed the agreement, it had always wanted all the IFOR nations to agree. It proved impossible to persuade Russia. "They (NATO) waited as long as it could but finally had to go ahead without Russian agreement," one said.
"Russia has said it will neither approve nor disapprove of the memorandum. We will have to see what that will mean in practice," he added.
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