U.N. prosecutor urges delay on Kosovo future status

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes court for the Balkans on Monday urged a delay in deciding the future of Kosovo, saying it would interfere with her quest to get major fugitives arrested for trial.

Carla Del Ponte, prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, also complimented Serbia's cooperation with the court but said it would not be complete until two key suspects, Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic were in custody.

Although Kosovo's future is not part of her mandate, Del Ponte told reporters, after a speech to the U.N. Security Council, that an immediate decision on independence for the Serbian province would add to political controversy facing Belgrade's leaders.

"It's political and it could interfere in cooperation with us" on the remaining fugitives, she said. "It would be better if the decision on Kosovo is not coming out now."

Russia, an ally of Serbia, has blocked a Western-backed council resolution that would pave the way for independence by Kosovo's 90 percent Albanian majority. Moscow has called for a delay, as has France.

Del Ponte ends her term of office in mid-September and on Monday gave her last address to the U.N. Security Council. She argued that the court should stay open, even if in greatly reduced form, until four remaining suspects were jailed.

Aside from Karadzic and Mladic, the others are Stojan Zupljanin, onetime chief of police in Banja Luka and later an adviser to the Bosnian Serb president, and Goran Hadzic, for former president of the so-called Republic of Serbian Krajina in Croatia.

"We believe that these fugitives are currently in Serbia or within Serbia's reach" or other states in the region, she said. But Karadzic, the civilian war time leader, "has disappeared from the radar screens of the relevant services and it seems that no one is actively searching for him."