The United Nations war crimes tribunal set out a possible compromise yesterday to overcome a stalemate with Belgrade over the trial of the former Yugoslav president, Mr Slobodan Milosevic.
Deputy prosecutor Graham Blewitt, speaking in London, said the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia would be willing to hold part of Mr Milosevic's trial in Belgrade. He also said new indictments charging Mr Milosevic with responsibility for alleged war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia would be issued soon, adding to an existing 1999 indictment over the Kosovo war.
"We're almost poised to be bringing indictments for Croatia and Bosnia as well," Mr Blewitt told a seminar at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
"I'm a great supporter of trials being held in former Yugoslavia. We are too remote in The Hague . . . We couldn't hold the entire trial in Serbia because some witnesses would not want to come to Belgrade, but I see part of the trial taking place in Belgrade for Milosevic," he said.
President Vojislav Kostunica of Yugoslavia, who ousted Mr Milosevic in a popular uprising last October after a presidential election, has refused to hand over his predecessor to The Hague tribunal, which he has denounced as a political court.
Mr Blewitt said the idea of holding part of an international trial in Belgrade had been raised with members of the new reformist government but not fully discussed.
He said it would be legitimate for Serbia to try Mr Milosevic for financial fraud before he faced the tribunal for war crimes, if the Serbian prosecution were ready first. But Belgrade would first have to surrender Mr Milosevic to The Hague, and he could be returned to face a domestic trial.
Mr Blewitt, who appeared keen to smooth over a war of words between Mr Kostunica and the chief war crimes prosecutor, Ms Carla del Ponte, predicted that Serbia would come around to surrendering Mr Milosevic.
The Bosnian Croat leader, Mr Ante Jelavic, was quoted yesterday as saying he did not expect widespread sanctions against his people, whose national congress threatened to enact self-rule despite fierce Western criticism. "I do not think sanctions are a realistic option," he told Croatia's Vecernji List newspaper in an interview.