BELGRADE: Opinion polls in Serbia show that large majorities believe the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to be a political instrument to bash Serbs. So they oppose extradition of the indicted - including ex-president Milosevic - to the Hague Tribunal. When the Tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, comes to Belgrade this Tuesday her welcome will not be warm.

Democratic politicians everywhere vie for the support of ethnic lobbies. To gain the Cuban vote in Florida, American politicians are tough on Fidel Castro; to secure Jewish votes in New York, they are soft on Israel. At the same time as they play this game, US policymakers (both Democrats and Republicans) demand that Vojislav Kostunica, President of Yugoslavia, cooperate with the Hague Tribunal unconditionally.

Kostunica, however, is a sensible politician. He knows that, although the Serbian lobby is weak in the US, it is all�powerful in Serbia. Taking the mood of his voters seriously, Kostunica criticizes the Tribunal and expresses reservations about receiving Mrs. del Ponte.

Long before the civil war in former Yugoslavia, I concluded that the world needed an international court to try governments and army commanders for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. But ever since the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was established in 1993 by the UN Security Council, I have been disappointed. I feel like some communist true believer who, in the 1930s, suddenly realized that terror existed in the Soviet Union.

Why this change of heart? Biljana Plavsic, professor of biology and a leader of Bosnia’s Serbs, recently appeared before the Hague Tribunal to face charges of genocide. But the prosecutor merely repeated accusations about crimes committed by the Bosnian Serbs that have been known for years. Not a shred of new or recent evidence was presented.

When Mrs. Plavsic was the pro�Western president of the Serbian part of Bosnia - between 1996 and 1998 - and in conflict with her more nationalist colleagues, she was hailed in the West as a democrat and champion of tolerance. I remember seeing President Jacques Chirac kiss her hand at the entrance to the Elysee Palace. I am reminded of Stalin's purges. One day you are a Hero of the Soviet Union, and the next you are shot as an enemy of the people.

On May 27, 1999, at the height of the NATO bombing campaign, Judge Louise Arbour of Canada, Mrs. del Ponte’s predecessor as the Hague Tribunal’s chief prosecutor, issued a warrant for the arrest of President Slobodan Milosevic. The indictment was based on evidence gathered by American and British intelligence services about the expulsions and killings of Albanians in Kosovo. Milosevic could have been charged by the Tribunal years before because of his responsibility for the war in Bosnia. But America’s State Department needed his support to conclude the Dayton peace agreement of 1995, so Milosevic’s crimes of the time were conveniently forgotten.

Soon after the warrant for Milosevic was issued, I heard in Belgrade that Vuk Draskovic, an opposition leader, was being threatened with indictment by US officials for the activities of his short�lived paramilitary organization during the 1991 war in Croatia. It seems as if the Americans were saying: stop creating conflicts with other opposition leaders, or we will indict you.

Is it really so easy to dismiss out of hand as unreconstructed nationalists those Serbs who ask: why was Franjo Tudjman (the former president of Croatia) never indicted? Under his rule almost half a million Serbs were expelled from Croatia; he, too, sent troops into Bosnia to partition Bosnian territory.

What of Alija Izetbegovic, the Muslim former president of Bosnia, who never wanted a multi�ethnic (Muslim�Serb�Croat) Bosnia, but rather the first Muslim state in Europe? Under his rule, Sarajevo was "cleansed" of most of its Serbs and Croats. And what of Hashim Thaci, the young leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army? When, in June 1999, Serbian troops moved out of Kosovo and NATO moved in, it was the KLA that really took over. Since then it has destroyed dozens of Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries, killed hundreds of civilians, and expelled almost all Serbs and other non�Albanians.

Last but definitely not least can we avoid asking questions about NATO’s responsibility? Perhaps several thousand Serbian civilians were killed during the NATO bombing. It may turn that the depleted uranium bullets used during the Kosovo war cause lethal radiation and that some commanders and politicians knew about this. By bombing Serbia's infrastructure, NATO also violated Article 14 of the 1977 Protocol of the Geneva Convention of 1949, which prohibits attacks on "objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population."

America will never accept the jurisdiction of an independent international court over its political leaders and military forces. Nor will any other great power. The spokesman for the International Relations Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives has stated this bluntly: "You're more likely to see the UN building dismantled brick�by�brick and thrown into the Atlantic than see NATO pilots go before a UN tribunal.”

Instead of being fair and delivering justice, the Hague Tribunal has surrendered to political pressures and manipulation. Rather than helping Serbs achieve a moral catharsis by punishing their guilty leaders for their misdeeds, the Hague Tribunal is only reinforcing anti�Western prejudices and the sense of victimization already pervasive in Serbia.