Serbia will face pressure from Brussels over the case of the three officials from the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) whose extradition is demanded by the Hague Tribunal.
The Vecernje Novosti daily reported it on Thursday, and said they received confirmation of this from President of the Council for Cooperation with the Hague Tribunal, Rasim Ljajic.
“In the next report, that the Tribunal will submit to the (UN) Council, the issue of the failure to extradite the Radicals will be highlighted, and then the issue will be handled by the UN office in Brussels, because the Tribunal will lobby the EU and its member-states to exert pressure on us to resolve this problem,” Ljajic said.
In practice, this could mean that some EU countries would refuse to agree to the opening of new chapters in Serbia’s EU accession talks until Jovo Ostojic, Vjerica Radeta, and Petar Jojic have been extradited, the daily said.
The three are charged with contempt of court in the case against SRS leader Vojislav Seselj, and are accused of threatening, intimidating and offering bribes to witnesses.
The daily said that it learned from the Tribunal recently that “the current lack of cooperation of Serbia in the contempt of course proceedings is a reversal and a step backwards in the cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, something that President of the Tribunal Carmel Agius has already stressed in his address to the Security Council in June 2016.”
Agius should present his next six-month report to the UN Security Council by the end of the year which will contain the latest information on the current status of the proceedings in the contempt of court case, and an assessment of Serbia’s cooperation in this case.
(B92, 01.12.2016)
http://www.b92.net/eng/news/politics.php?yyyy=2016&mm=12&dd=01&nav_id=99847
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