Milan Milutinović

Milan Milutinović ( Serbian - Cyrillic Милан Милутиновић ; born December 19, 1942 in Belgrade ) is a Serbian politician and was President of the Republic of Serbia from 1998 to 2002 .

Life

Milutinović grew up in a communist family. He studied law at the University of Belgrade , where he met Slobodan Milošević , with whom he has been close friends ever since. During his studies he worked actively in the Communist Youth Association and joined the Serbian section of the Communist Party.

After completing his studies, he was a member of the Social Policy Chamber of the Federal Parliament of Yugoslavia, Republic Secretary for Education and Science in the Serbian government and head of department in the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry. In 1989 Milutinović was sent to Athens as ambassador and was appointed Foreign Minister in August 1995. In the first months of his tenure, he played a key role in the negotiations on the Dayton Treaty and subsequently endeavored to reintegrate the country into the European community.

On December 7, 1997 Milutinović ran for the party Socijalistička Partija Srbije for the office of President of the Republic of Serbia. It was already the third round of voting, as the two previous opponents Vojislav Šešelj and Zoran Lilić had neither the election of September 21st, nor the runoff election of October 5th. Milutinović replaced Lilić in the third ballot, but again none of the candidates could achieve an absolute majority of the votes. Only in the runoff election on December 21, 1997, Milutinović was elected with 59.23% of the vote.

Milutinović's role as President of the Republic of Serbia was small due to Milošević's position of power. He was considered a colorless and absolutely loyal colleague of Milošević.

On May 24, 1999 (published: May 27, 1999) the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague brought charges against Milutinović for persecuting Kosovar Albanian civilians on political, racial and religious grounds, as well as murder and deportation. As President of the Republic of Serbia, Milutinović enjoyed political immunity . After the Serbian parliament passed a law on April 11, 2002 regulating the transfer of suspected war criminals to The Hague, Milutinović prevented an extradition at the end of his term of office by voluntarily surrendering to the International Criminal Court on January 20, 2003. Milutinović appeared before the Court for the first time on January 27, 2003. He declared himself innocent and claimed that he had little real power as the President of Serbia. He also pointed out his health problems.

The trial of Milutinović began on July 10, 2006. He was charged with Nikola Šainović , Dragoljub Ojdanić , Nebojša Pavković , Vladimir Lazarević and Sreten Lukić . While Šainović, Pavković and Lukić were sentenced to 22 years 'imprisonment each and Lazarević and Ojdanić to 15 years' imprisonment each, Milutinović was acquitted when the verdict was pronounced on February 26, 2009, as the court did not consider his guilt sufficiently proven.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Milan Milutinović in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
2. ^ Spiegel-Online: Milan Milutinović - War Crimes Tribunal acquits ex-Serbian presidents
3. ↑ Tagesschau.de: Tribunal acquits Serbia's ex-President Milutinovic ( Memento from March 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive )

Web links

• ICTY indictment (PDF file; 190 kB)