Yugoslav puppets sell Milosevic for dollars

On June 23, Yugoslavia's coalition government (installed last year in a 
US-backed coup designed to look like a "popular uprising") passed a decree 
to make it legally possible for Yugoslav authorities to hand over people to 
the Hague Tribunal. The move is intended to pave the way to send former 
President Slobodan Milosevic to be tried for "war crimes".

Crushing the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) and its leader Milosevic has 
always been the joint aim of NATO and the puppet government of the current 
President Vojislav Kostunica.

Kostunica's government has had to move slowly, however, for despite the 
image of "democracy triumphant" presented by the Western media and a reign 
of terror against the SPS, the Socialist Party and Milosevic retain popular 
support.

Kostunica has hitherto been obliged to maintain a public image of 
opposition to the intrusion into Yugoslavia of the US-controlled kangaroo 
court in the Hague, saying that President Milosevic would never stand trial 
there. Now he has pledged Belgrade's cooperation with the Tribunal.

Montenegro's Socialist People's Party (SNP), the junior partner in the 
ruling coalition, opposes the move and refused to support the move as a 
bill in the Parliament. By-passing Parliament the "Pro-democracy reformers" 
in federal cabinet used their majority to adopt the measure as a decree.

The SNP says the Hague "War Crimes Tribunal for the Territory of the Former 
Yugoslavia" is biased against Yugoslav citizens and handing them over would 
violate Yugoslavia's constitution. SNP ministers have threatened to resign 
from the cabinet.

Of concern to the SNP — and all Yugoslav patriots — is that the decree is 
an act of blatant grovelling to the US and NATO, the aggressors in the 1999 
air war against Yugoslavia.

The Kostunica government's decision was taken exactly one week before an 
"international donors' conference" on June 29 from which it was hoping to 
receive more than a billion dollars in foreign investment and "aid".

The US had threatened that it would not even attend the conference unless 
the Kostunica government acted to bring Milosevic (and the other former 
Yugoslav military and political leaders who defied NATO) to "justice" in 
the Hague.

Yugoslavia's Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus denied that the decree 
betrayed the former Yugoslav leader in return for money. "We are not 
selling off anyone", he said. "We are only fulfilling our obligations as an 
equal member of the international community."

He said he believed there were Hague Tribunal indictments against a total 
of 16 Yugoslav citizens including former President Milosevic and they would 
all have to be handed over.

The move has aroused anger among progressives everywhere. The US and NATO 
were the perpetrators of the war crimes in Yugoslavia. The fabrications 
invented to justify the imperialist attacks have been resoundingly exposed 
and denounced in the period since the air war ended and NATO moved in to 
occupy Kosovo.

As the struggle within Yugoslavia intensified the propaganda war to vilify 
the Yugoslav leadership as war criminals has intensified. Milosevic is 
routinely identified as being responsible for "the killing of one million 
Albanians" in Kosovo.

By using their control of the mass media, the ruling class of the US, 
Britain and Germany in particular — the real war criminals — intend to 
indict others for their crimes. The victims of NATO aggression are 
presented as the villians.

The charging and sentencing of Milosevic and others is designed to publicly 
demonstrate how anyone who dares to stand up to imperialism's New World 
Order will be totally crushed.