> > From: Michael Pugliese[SMTP:debsian at pacbell.net]
>> Reply To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
>> Sent: Tuesday, April 24, 2001 5:12 PM
>> To: lbo
>> Subject: Officers Charged for Kosovo Killings/Rugova associate shot
>> dead
>>
>> Tuesday April 24 4:11 PM ET
> > Officers Charged for Kosovo Killings
> >
>> BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) - Nearly 200 Yugoslav army officers and soldiers
>> have been charged with committing war crimes in Kosovo, and the trials of
>> some have already started, military officials said Tuesday.
>.
>Unfortunately, the Susan Sontags of the world aren't happy with these
>domestic Serbian war crimes trials. As the army lawyer quoted in this piece
>says, the point of the trials is to show that responsibility for war crimes
>lies with the people who committed them - not with the Serbian people.
I think that the domestic war-crime trials are a vehicle of struggles for power within Serbia. The trials will help purge the Yugoslav army of elements suspected to be insufficiently loyal to the new regime. Those who can't control the army can't control the nation. The trials must be largely symbolic, though, for Albanian nationalists are likely to continue to present a "problem" (both for the new regime & KFOR) that may demand a military response & the new regime thus can't afford to alienate the entire armed forces (whose undivided allegiance they have yet to gain, as shown in the difficulty of imprisoning Milosevic), I believe.
>By contrast, the point of trying Milosevic at the Hague is to imply
>collective guilt - he was the head of state so he can symbolically sit in
>for the Serbs as a group. Tudjman was never indicted when he was alive, and
>neither was Izetbegovic - but they're just as guilty as Slobo. A few weeks
>ago, Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, insisted she would have indicted
>Tudjman. Somehow, of course, it never happened.
Also, the Hague trial will set a new precedent in the evolution of international legal standards in such a way that will give more power to imperial nations that basically control international bodies (be they military or judicial or otherwise).
Yoshie