WASHINGTON – Uncle Sam slapped a $5 million bounty yesterday on the head of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic.
The State Department announced the seven-figure reward for tips leading to the Yugoslav president’s “transfer” to The Hague, Netherlands, to face trial for war crimes against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
Reward posters showing the face of a dead child and her doll lying on a roadside in Kosovo will be circulated throughout the Balkans, and officials are considering spreading the word in newspaper ads, fliers and even on matchbooks.
Until now, the rewards have been offered only for information on international terrorists – such as Osama bin Laden and the World Trade Center bombers – not on war criminals.
The State Department, noting that Congress expanded the program last fall to include Balkan war criminals, decided to offer up to $5 million for help in nailing Milosevic and his four top indicted aides, a slew of indicted war criminals in Bosnia and anyone else indicted in the future for atrocities in Bosnia and Yugoslavia.
“Money is a very powerful tool. We are certainly optimistic that people will come forward,” said Andrew Laine, spokesman for the bureau that runs the rewards program. He noted that the State Department has forked out $6 million in 20 cases.
State Department spokesman James Rubin said anyone who has any information on the indicted war criminals should contact the nearest U.S. embassy, go to the State Department’s Web site (www.state.gov), or call 1-800-HEROES1.
“It is our view that ultimately, people indicted for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia will face justice in The Hague. Their day will come,” Rubin said.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon conceded that a mid-level CIA analyst repeatedly warned his colleagues that the spy agency had targeted the wrong building just before U.S. pilots mistakenly bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, believing it was a Serbian military facility.
The analyst even called a defense official in Europe as the B-2 bomber was dropping its bomb.
A U.S. intelligence official told The Post the warnings were never passed along to senior CIA officials and emphasized the analyst “had no idea” the building was an embassy.