A former Yugoslav army chief is ready to surrender to the UN war crimes tribunal after parliament passed a law last week approving co-operation with the court, a German-based newspaper has reported.
Former Yugoslav army chief of staff General Dragoljub Ojdanic said he would not try to evade his legal obligation to appear in The Hague, the Frankfurt-based Serbian language newspaper Vesti said.
"They can arrest me straight away but there is no need as I am not going to run away or hide," Vesti quoted him as saying.
Separately, B-92 radio reported on its website that lawyers for another indictee, former Yugoslav deputy premier Nikola Sainovic, had contacted Serbian authorities several times, most recently on Friday, to discuss their client's possible surrender.
B-92 quoted unnamed sources as saying Sainovic's lawyers had met officials from the Serbian justice and interior ministries to discuss guarantees that the government might provide to secure his release pending trial.
Yesterday former Serbian Interior Minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, another war crimes indictee, died after shooting himself in the head outside the Yugoslav parliament hours after it passed the cooperation law.
The war crimes tribunal has indicted Ojdanic, Sainovic and Stojiljkovic, along with former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, for atrocities committed by forces under their command in Kosovo in 1999. Current Serbian president Milan Milutinovic is also on the indictment.
Milosevic himself is on trial after Serbian reformists who toppled him in 2000 transferred him to The Hague last June.