Former Serb President Comes Home After War Crimes

On Thursday, the U.N. court for former Yugoslavia cleared Milutinovic, 66, on all five counts against him.

Serbia's former president Milan Milutinovic was welcomed home to Belgrade on Friday after he was acquitted by a United Nations war crimes court but celebrations were tempered by the jailing of five other Serb officials.

On Thursday, the U.N. court for former Yugoslavia cleared Milutinovic, 66, on all five counts against him, including murder, deportation and war crimes, and ordered his release from detention.

"I am happy to be back in my Serbia, my Belgrade," Milutinovic told reporters. "I am grateful to all who believed in my innocence. I am tired now and with mixed emotions."

Milutinovic, an ally and successor of late Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, and other five co-defendants went on trial two years ago charged with the mass deportations and and murders of Kosovo Albanians by Serb forces in 1999.

The court sentenced the five, including Serbia's former army chief Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic and deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic, to prison terms of between 15 and 22 years for war crimes against Kosovo Albanian civilians during the 1998-99 war with separatist guerrillas.

The sentencing caused anger among Serb nationalists who believe the court is biased and anti-Serb.

"It is tragic day for Serbia," said Dragan Todorovic of the nationalist Radical Party.

Serbia's point man for cooperation with the Hague court, Rasim Ljajic, said the severity of the sentences invited comparison with the acquittal of Kosovo Albanian guerrilla leader Ramush Haradinaj last year.

"It will strengthen the impression of the tribunal's double standards," he said.

SUSPECTS STILL AT LARGE

Serbia still has to arrest and extradite two remaining war crimes fugitives to the Hague, including Ratko Mladic, Bosnian Serb military commander during the 1992-1995 Bosnia war, sought for genocide including the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica.

The other fugitive is Goran Hadzic who led Serbs in Croatia during the 1991-1995 conflict.

Serbia's Interior Minister Ivica Dacic said the Balkan country will fulfill its duty to the Hague but that Serbia's role in the Yugoslav wars was still misunderstood.

"Serbia as a state did not systematically commit genocide," Dacic said.

The government of Mirko Cvetkovic has made gaining membership of the European Union a priority but must extradite war crimes suspects as a condition.

Serbia already antagonised the West with an 2008 International Court of Justice suit against Kosovo, which declared independence last year with the backing of the United States and most of its EU allies.

It also outraged its neighbour Bosnia this week by issuing arrest warrants against Bosnian Muslim officials for war crimes against Yugoslav Army soldiers during the early stages of Bosnian war, a conflict where Serbia is widely seen as the aggressor.