Global Policy Forum

By Nicholas Wood

Officials at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia criticized the Bosnian Serb government on Wednesday for offering financial rewards to war crimes suspects who surrender to prosecutors.

After the Balkan wars, Bosnia was divided into two sectors, the Muslim-Croat Federation and the Serbian Republic, under a Bosnian Serb government. The Serbian Republic announced this month that families of suspects who surrendered this year would receive a payment of 25,000 euros, or $33,263, plus a pension of 690 euros, or $918, a month. Each family would also receive four airplane tickets to fly to The Hague to visit its relative in prison. Florence Hartman, the spokeswoman for the court's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, accused the government of "treating war criminals as V.I.P.'s."

Local news media have reported that Vinko Pandurevic, a Bosnian Serb wanted on suspicion of taking part in the massacre of at least 7,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995, was talking with the Bosnian Serb government about possible surrender. He would be the first suspect in war crimes to benefit from the plan.

Bosnian Serb officials were unavailable for comment on Mr. Pandurevic's possible arrest. However, Ms. Hartman said she thought the government had been planning to transfer him to the tribunal in any event, and that the offer of a reward may have delayed his arrest. "They are negotiating instead of arresting people," she said.

Bosnia's most senior international official, Lord Ashdown, was expected to penalize the Bosnian Serb government for its lack of cooperation with the tribunal, delaying possible membership in NATO's Partnership for Peace program. An official in Mr. Ashdown's office said measures would be announced Thursday, with recommendations for changing the ministries of defense and interior, the two institutions responsible for arresting suspects in war crimes.

While NATO and the United States have offered substantial financial rewards for information that might lead to the arrest of war criminals, this is the first time money has been offered to the suspects themselves.