(6 Mar 2001) English/Nat
XFA
The Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica has urged the West to refocus its efforts from having Slobodan Milosevic extradited for trial on war crimes, to ending spreading ethnic Albanian insurrection in the Balkans.
Kostunica said the Yugoslavs are willing to cooperate with the UN war crimes tribunal - but it isn't a matter of life and death for them, whereas the insurrection is.
Kostunica spoke to The Associated Press in Banja Luka, where he was signing an agreement regarding special relations with the Bosnian Serbs.
He said that the NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force doesn't pay enough attention to its basic task of bringing prosperity and peace to the people of Kosovo.
He accused KFOR's commanders of putting too much emphasis on the safety and well-being of their own troops, to the detriment of their mission to control radicalism and ethnic violence.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"It was easier for KFOR to do something while violence was still within Kosovo. I do not have any explanation why for two years nearly KFOR was not able to cope with violence in Kosovo. Now we are having it spilling out of Kosovo to south Serbia and to Macedonia and it would be much, much easier to face that violence and to fight it. I think that the basic problem with KFOR and the international community there is that actually they had not paid enough attention to something that is their basic task. Their basic task is actually to bring security and peace to the people living in Kosovo. They were caring more about their own security and not about the people. There are Serbs, non-Albanians - even moderate Albanians
have been killed. And KFOR is now really lacking will to act. You know, if you have 50-thousand soldiers and in case of...quite simple cases of... violence there you see that these soldiers have no will to act then something is wrong with that mission."
SUPER CAPTION: Vojislav Kostunica, Yugoslav President
SOUNDBITE: (English)
'We are not avoiding our obligations. We have in mind those concerning the Hague tribunal but we are in need of something very precise and concrete. And that is the law on cooperation with the Hague tribunal. Most of the western public know, and usually accept me as so-called moderate nationalist and legalist. That other part of my political portrait is about legalism, about law on the cooperation with the Hague tribunal and we are working, our Federal government is working on that. On the other hand we are pressed with all sorts of problems. Terrorism in the south of Serbia and sometimes I'm really wondering how some people don't see that. Some see, some of them do not see what our real problems are. Actually, it is a matter of life and death for us, and the Hague tribunal, regardless of how eager we are to cooperate with it is not matter of life and death for us."
SUPER CAPTION: Vojislav Kostunica, Yugoslav President
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