Albright Vows New Steps to Arrest War Crimes Suspects

THE HAGUE —  Secretary of State Madeleine Albright paid a brief, symbolic visit to the Balkan war crimes tribunal Wednesday and vowed to take new steps to win the arrest of indicted war criminals.

The visit to the tribunal--known officially as the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia--came only a few days before Albright will travel to the Balkans on a trip that includes meetings with Croatian President Franjo Tudjman and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

It was clear from her remarks here that those meetings are expected to be confrontational.

“I’m going to be delivering a new, tougher message to both Tudjman and Milosevic that their lack of cooperation is a roadblock . . . to their full membership in the international community,” she said. She pointedly avoided the customary diplomatic reference to the two leaders’ titles.

“I am confident that a price will be paid for the atrocities that ravaged Bosnia for four years,” she added. “Until it is paid by those who perpetrated the crimes, it will be paid by those who protect them.”

Her comments were the latest sign of a renewed Clinton administration push to gain greater compliance with the 1995 Dayton peace accords. Those agreements not only ended the Balkan war but also committed the signatories--including Tudjman and Milosevic--to hand over war criminals and assist in a peaceful return of refugees.

Despite 18 months of an uneasy peace, there has been little progress on either front.

Albright was a key figure in establishing the war crimes tribunal four years ago during her tenure as United Nations ambassador and is known to consider its success a personal as well as a U.S. policy priority. The tribunal’s work has been crippled by a general lack of cooperation on the part of the two Balkan leaders and NATO’s refusal to pursue indicted suspects.

Only eight of the 74 people indicted for war crimes have been handed over to the Hague tribunal. None of them was a major player in the brutal, 4 1/2-year Balkan conflict conspicuous for the atrocities committed against civilians.

After considerable arm-twisting by the U.S., Tudjman last year persuaded one Bosnian Croat to surrender and recently handed over a second suspect, but he has refused to budge on others. Milosevic has turned over no one.

The new push on Bosnia-Herzegovina authorized by Clinton earlier this month appears to have made little early headway on the war crimes issue. According to a senior State Department official, when Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granic was asked to assist in the arrest of Dario Kordic and Ivica Rajic, two Bosnian Croats who are indicted war criminals, Granic responded that he had no idea of their whereabouts. American officials said they believe Kordic, at least, spends considerable time in Zagreb, the Croatian capital.

In a meeting this week with U.S. special Bosnia coordinator Robert Gelbard in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and the rump Yugoslavia, Milosevic refused to hand over three Bosnian Serb officers indicted for a hospital massacre of Croats after Serbian forces captured the Croatian city of Vukovar in late 1991, according to American officials. The three are known to be living in Serbia.

While Albright used tough language in her statement here, the problem for the United States has been moving beyond rhetoric. With the Pentagon said to be resisting pressure to attempt a military swoop to capture at least some of the suspected war criminals, diplomatic options remain limited.

A senior State Department official said that for Serbia, continued refusal to cooperate would probably mean no possibility of easing those few sanctions that remain in force against Belgrade, including a block on access to international financial institutions and the refusal to grant United Nations representation to Yugoslavia, now composed only of Serbia and tiny Montenegro.

Action against Croatia would probably include blocking of international loans and of the country’s participation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Partnership for Peace program, the official said.