Milosevic must be tried by war crimes tribunal

About the time the Bush administration was rewarding Yugoslavia for its arrest of former President Slobodan Milosevic, the current leader of the war-torn nation was making it clear that he does not support sending Milosevic to The Hague to be tried for crimes against humanity.
"It should never happen," President Vojislav Kostunica told the New York Times Monday. "I think that it's possible to do everything so that it should never happen." The statement certainly does not define the word cooperation, which the administration used in justifying the release of $50 million in nonhumanitarian aid for Yugoslavia.
Perhaps President George Bush should have done what the Times did, namely, ask Kostunica if he believed that his predecessor should stand before the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
Defiance: Now, however, Bush must deal with a defiant Yugoslav president and a defiant Yugoslav ex-president. Indeed, Milosevic, who was arrested early Sunday morning on state charges of corruption and abuse of power, has all but admitted that he was behind the atrocities committed in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia. In response to the accusation that he illegally channeled millions of dollars to secret funds, Milosevic said that cash was sent to ethnic Serb forces in Bosnia and Croatia. The forces were trying to prevent those Republics from breaking away from Yugoslavia.
The war crimes tribunal has already indicted the man who once described himself as "the Ayatollah Khomeini of Serbia" for crimes against humanity stemming from his bloody campaign against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999.
More than 200,000 people died in the wars that resulted in Yugoslavia's breaking up, and their blood is on Milosevic's hands. He must not be given a pass, as President Kostunica intends.
Genocide is not a state crime. It is the responsibility of the international community to ensure that the architects of such inhumanity are made to answer -- in an international arena.
The U.N. tribunal is the only setting for the trial of an individual who expresses no remorse for the death and destruction that he orchestrated.
Protection: Milosevic apparently pressured Kostunica to protect him by putting a gun to his own head. On Sunday, Milosevic reportedly threatened to kill himself while holding a gun in his hand, but surrendered after a promise was made that he would not be sent to The Hague to stand trial
It's a promise the Bush administration must ensure is not kept. The president should deliver a stern warning to Kostunica: Failure to extradite Milosevic to The Hague will result in Yugoslavia's losing a friend and the millions of dollars that friendship brings.