CBS Evening News open - 1999-05-27

Channel: malgent

Transcript

Language: English (original, YouTube automatic captions)

[0:02] A warrant is out tonight for a sitting

[0:05] president, Slobedon Mallovich of

[0:07] Yugoslavia. And suddenly finding the

[0:09] road to peace there is a lot more

[0:12] complicated. Even as a US crime rate

[0:14] falls, there are growing protests over

[0:16] police brutality. And the town that is

[0:19] defying nature and the odds on the eve

[0:22] of a dangerous hurricane season.

[0:27] This is the CBS Evening News with Dan

[0:32] Rather.

[0:34] Good evening. Dan is off tonight. I'm

[0:36] Bob Schaefer. For the first time in

[0:38] history, an international court has

[0:40] indicted a sitting head of state as a

[0:42] war criminal. The UN War Crimes Tribunal

[0:45] accuses Yugoslav President Sloidon

[0:47] Mallosvich of mass atrocities in the

[0:50] ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. CBS News

[0:53] correspondent Richard Roth begins our

[0:55] coverage.

[0:56] >> The charges are murder, deportation,

[0:59] crimes against humanity, arrest warrants

[1:01] naming, his army chief, and three other

[1:04] top Serbian officials went out today

[1:06] from the war crimes tribunal in the H.

[1:09] These accused are criminally responsible

[1:12] for the deportation of 740,000

[1:15] Kosovo Albanians from Kosovo and for the

[1:20] murder of over 340

[1:23] identified Kosovo Albanians.

[1:26] >> In 42 pages with names and dates, the

[1:29] indictment for the first time makes a

[1:31] criminal case of Kosovo's personal

[1:34] stories of hardship and terror and

[1:36] death. The stories of suffering that

[1:38] have been pouring out of Kosovo with

[1:40] every desperate column of refugees. War

[1:43] crimes investigators took their

[1:45] testimony, compiling a catalog of

[1:47] atrocities. This man says he saw 156

[1:52] people from his village executed near a

[1:54] town called Isiza.

[1:56] >> We're able to piece together an enormous

[1:58] amount of information about

[2:00] >> surveillance photos say a state

[2:01] department expert backed up his claims.

[2:04] We're able to determine through our

[2:06] analysts that um these in fact are

[2:09] freshly dug individual grave sites.

[2:13] >> They are crimes, say the prosecutors,

[2:15] with high-tech evidence gathered by

[2:17] satellite and home video of atrocities

[2:19] smuggled out by survivors. The

[2:22] eyewitness accounts tell of Serb police

[2:24] arriving at night, burning homes,

[2:26] shooting whole families. The indictment

[2:29] though covers just this year beginning

[2:31] with a massacre last January in Rach

[2:34] listing the names of 46 people killed.

[2:38] The war crimes tribunal is still

[2:40] investigating Milosvich and the others

[2:42] for atrocities during Bosnia's brutal

[2:44] war. The new indictments may lend

[2:46] support to NATO's aim of defeating

[2:48] Mallosovich, but they also give the

[2:50] Yugoslav president one more reason to

[2:53] keep fighting in Kosovo. Facing life in

[2:56] prison, he may now be a man with nothing

[2:58] to lose. Richard Roth, CBS News, The

[3:01] Hague.

[3:02] >> In Belgrade, the Yugoslav government

[3:05] immediately rejected the indictment as a

[3:07] US political maneuver. And one of

[3:09] Melosvich's leading political opponents

[3:11] also criticized it, saying the charges

[3:14] were badly timed. Even within NATO, the

[3:17] reaction was mixed with some of the

[3:18] allies saying the indictment will

[3:20] complicate the search for peace. But

[3:22] President Clinton said it was the right

[3:24] thing to do. Correspondent Scott P is at

[3:26] the White House. Scott.

[3:28] >> Bob. Essentially, there has been a

[3:29] fundamental change in Mr. Clinton's war

[3:32] policy. The administration made it clear

[3:34] today that Malloich has to go. It isn't

[3:37] enough any longer for him simply to

[3:39] acquies to NATO's demands. In Florida

[3:42] today, the president said he welcomed

[3:44] the Mallich indictment.

[3:47] It will help to deter future war crimes

[3:49] by establishing that those who give

[3:51] orders will be held accountable. It will

[3:54] make clear to the Serbian people

[3:56] precisely who is responsible for this

[3:58] conflict and who is prolonging it.

[4:02] >> In Washington, the Secretary of State

[4:04] offered Mallosovich no hope of a deal.

[4:07] We have made clear that uh we would not

[4:10] go for any kind of immunity.