Word: croatia
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Even those who are not Milosevic supporters resent seeing the former leader of their country, uniquely, put in the dock when so many other tyrants, from Fidel Castro to the late Franjo Tudjman of Croatia, have walked free. Vojislav Kostunica, the democratically elected President of Yugoslavia and hero of the people-power revolution that overthrew Milosevic, bitterly opposed sending him to a tribunal he regards as biased against Serbia. He called the deportation illegal and unconstitutional. It was. When the Serbian legislature, preferring that Milosevic be tried at home, declined to extradite him, the Serbian government ordered him extradited...
...Then again, such problems may be symptomatic of the widespread denial that persists among Serbs over some of the crimes committed in their name in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, and the trial - together with the recent discovery of mass graves inside Serbia containing bodies moved from Kosovo, and an increasing willingness of witnesses to come forward - could also prove cathartic...
...Milosevic's trial, for war crimes in Kosovo and also in Bosnia and Croatia, will be hailed as an epic victory by advocates of an international system of justice to deal with war criminals. The power of economic sanctions was underlined by the fact that the Milosevic was first arrested to meet a deadline set by the U.S. congress, and was then extradited to coincide with a donor conference at which Western assistance was to be conditional on Belgrade's cooperation with the Hague tribunal. And that success will spur the efforts of those seeking redress for crimes committed...
...There are other signs of desperation. Macedonian police recently began handing out automatic weapons - about 2,000 so far - to "reservists," especially those who belonged to Georgievski's VMRO-DPMNE political party. Similar efforts in the early '90s had sped the descent into war in nearby Croatia and Bosnia. Graffiti signaling the emergence of Macedonian Slav paramilitaries is scrawled in Cyrillic on walls in Skopje's tumble-down neighborhoods. And when the government recently asked for some of the weapons distributed to "reservists" to be handed back, it had only minimal success...
ARRESTED. CARLOS MENEM, 70, flamboyant reformist President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999; on charges of leading a conspiracy to smuggle 6,500 tons of arms to Croatia and Ecuador while in office; in Buenos Aires. The first elected Argentine President ever arrested, Menem is too old to go to jail; under Argentine law, suspects 70 or older are kept under house arrest...