SERBIA-MONTENEGRO: Serbia's Prime Minister, Mr Vojislav Kostunica, defied growing international pressure to hand over war crimes suspects by saying his government would not risk outraging powerful nationalist groups by arresting them, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Budapest.
The United States and European Union are pressing Mr Kostunica to co-operate with the UN tribunal in The Hague, telling him that Serbia-Montenegro risks long-term international isolation if it fails to seize at least some of the 15 fugitive Serb suspects.
"There are some things that a country cannot do, even if it wanted to," Mr Kostunica said in a television interview yesterday. "We need to co-operate in a way that would not bring into question the country's political stability."
Mr Kostunica has suggested that he is encouraging the surrender of the suspects - foremost among them Gen Ratko Mladic, the man accused of committing genocide against Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 - but also insists that Serbia should be allowed to try them at home.
"We have no idea where most of those people are," Mr Kostunica claimed, while adding that all information about the possible whereabouts of suspects was "thoroughly checked".
His coalition government relies on the support of hard-line allies of former leader Mr Slobodan Milosevic, and they have vowed never to co-operate with a UN court that they accuse of anti-Serb bias.
But the international community is losing patience with Mr Kostunica, and has an ally in the shape of liberal Serb President Mr Boris Tadic, who has repeatedly criticised the premier for leading Serbia-Montenegro down a blind ally in opposing the UN court and pandering to nationalist sentiment. A vote on the 2005 budget in December could spark a government collapse and prompt elections next February, with Mr Tadic's supporters well placed to win.
"Serbia is obviously, tragically, turning back to the times of Slobodan Milosevic and new elections are inevitable, like a referendum on who wants isolation and who wants Europe," Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic said last week, amid reports that he was negotiating a job for himself and his wife in a future Tadic-led cabinet.
Mr Draskovic's party urged Serbs yesterday to refuse to send their sons for military service in protest at the army's failure to investigate fully the mysterious deaths of two conscripts at a top-security Belgrade base.
The military said initially that one soldier had killed the other and then shot himself dead, but lingering questions have forced the appointment of an independent commission. Serbian media have claimed that the two soldiers were shot by bodyguards of a top war crimes suspect who is hiding at the base.
The controversy clouded preparations for today's visit to Belgrade by Croatia's Prime Minister, Mr Ivo Sanader, the first such trip by a head of the Zagreb government since war dismembered Yugoslavia a decade ago.
Croatia has to improve relations with its Balkan neighbours to boost its prospects of starting EU accession talks next year.