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THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic was behind bars in The Hague on Friday after being delivered to the war crimes tribunal in a move that won Yugoslavia pledges of aid from grateful Western powers but kindled a crisis in Belgrade.
The United Nations' chief war crimes prosecutor said the handover meant others who did Milosevic's bidding in a decade of Balkans conflict and ethnic cleansing could be brought to trial. (Read photo caption below).
Delighted Western officials, meeting in Brussels, pledged 1.28 billion in aid to help end Yugoslavs' economic misery and rebuild a country shattered by NATO's 1999 bombing campaign.
But the surrender by the Serbian state government of the Serb nationalist whose policies tore multi-ethnic Yugoslavia apart amid the worst atrocities in Europe since World War Two effectively brought down the Yugoslav federal government.
Zoran Zizic, prime minister of the rump federation of Serbia with Montenegro, resigned in protest at the way Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic had Milosevic plucked without warning from Belgrade Central prison and handed over to UN officials.
They flew him to The Hague before the night was out.
Head bowed, his white hair and portly figure were briefly caught on camera in the early hours as he was led from a helicopter into the special compound for indicted war criminals.
``WHAT, ALREADY?''
The first head of state to be indicted for war crimes while in office, Milosevic was given three days by the U.N. tribunal to prepare for a first court appearance on Tuesday morning.
``What, already?'' a police source quoted him as asking when told in Belgrade prison on Thursday that he was being handed over. He calmly packed his slippers, but told a Hague prosecutor on the spot: ``I don't recognize your court.''
After his first night in Scheveningen prison, a medical examination found he had no health problems. Unlike 38 other indicted war criminals held there, he was to be held apart from other inmates for the first 10 days, officials said.
Toppled last October, Milosevic had brandished a gun and threatened to shoot himself three months ago rather than submit to his initial arrest.
If convicted on the four charges, including three of crimes against humanity in the Serbian province of Kosovo, the 59-year-old fallen strongman faces a maximum of life in jail.
Prosecutors said they were still considering further charges relating to wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said they could still charge him with the ultimate crime at the tribunal -- genocide.
A fresh indictment sheet produced on Friday added the names -- from Abazi to Zymeri -- of 300 identified victims of Serb ethnic cleansing against Kosovo Albanians in 1999, as NATO was bombing Yugoslavia in an effort to halt the killings.
Having Milosevic was a ``turning point'' that could lead to more arrests, Del Ponte said. ``Nobody is above the law and beyond the reach of justice.''
MILOSEVIC SURRENDER A KEY FACTOR IN WESTERN AID
Milosevic's trial was hailed in the West as vindicating a post-Cold War policy of ``humanitarian intervention.''
A few weeks before Christmas in 1991, as fighting raged with breakaway Croatia, he spoke to Serbs of ``dark, conservative forces'' aimed at the nation. ``We have no choice...but to stop them.''
The fighting never really stopped until the summer of 1999.
An estimated 20,000 died in the Croatian war of independence that ended in 1995. In Bosnia, fighting between 1992 and 1995 killed over 200,000. In Kosovo in 1998-99 an estimated 10,000 died in Serbian ethnic cleansing.
The European Commission and the World Bank, joint organizers of the donors' pledging conference in Brussels, made no secret of the fact that the surrender of Milosevic had been a key factor in extending 1.28 billion in aid to Yugoslavia.
The money will help to repair infrastructure -- some of it still damaged after NATO's 1999 air strikes -- and to pay teachers and doctors.
``It is a clear sign that Yugoslavia is back in the international community and we are taking the fast track back to Europe,'' Yugoslav Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus told a final news conference in Brussels
``NOT GUILTY'' PLEA LIKELY
Milosevic summoned an eight-man defense team from home and lawyers indicated he was likely to plead ``not guilty.''
The team said in Belgrade that they were preparing to travel to appear at the first hearing in The Hague next week.
``We will leave as soon as we get visas, even if it is over the weekend. We would like to be there on Monday as Milosevic will appear before the court for the first time on Tuesday,'' advocate Branimir Gugl told Reuters.
``He said that he doesn't feel guilty because his policy was to protect the interests of the Serbian people and he said he would do the same again. He feels more for his family than himself. He was trying to calm them down.''
For chief prosecutor Del Ponte, who doggedly demanded tougher Western action to nail big name suspects, seeing Milosevic in custody was just part one of a personal triumph.
``The arrest of Slobodan Milosevic is a turning point that will lend renewed energy to the task of arresting those fugitives that are still at liberty,'' she told a news conference, naming former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his chief military leader General Ratko Mladic.
These two had first been indicted almost six years ago, she noted, calling it ``scandalous'' that they were still free.
Mladen Ivanic, the prime minister of Bosnia's Serb republic said he now felt pressed to act: ``Since all the countries surrounding the Serb republic have taken on the obligation to fully cooperate with The Hague tribunal, the Serb republic's leadership is under pressure for more...decisive action.''
Chilling the West's political euphoria over Milosevic's handover, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said it could fan the flames of separatism even as the international community battles to avert a fourth ethnic war in Macedonia.
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PHOTO CAPTION
Forensic experts search for evidence in the international war crimes tribunal's identification center, in a morgue in the Bosnian town of Visoko, June 29, 2001. The forensic team found more than 60 bodies believed to be Bosnian Moslems killed by Serb forces in 1992 and thrown into the Piljak pit in the Serb controlled part of war-torn Balkan country. Slobodan Milosevic was behind bars in The Hague on Friday, facing charges of crimes against humanity. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters)
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