BELGRADE (AFP) - Chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said that the UN court investigating atrocities in the former Yugoslavia had transferred a case to Serbian prosecutors for the first time.
De Ponte announced the move after what she described as a "very fruitful" meeting with Vladimir Vukcevic, the chief prosecutor of Serbia's special court for war crimes and organized crime.
"I must confirm that we had very fruitful conversations and he received a very important case because we are in the completion strategy. I have decided that a case would be transferred to Belgrade," she said.
She gave no details on which case involving a suspect might be given to the Serbian prosecutors for investigation, which could then lead to a trial.
"We have many other cases to transfer in the near future. I am impressed with the structures here at the tribunal and I am sure they will be able to do it -- I am sure they will be able to conduct a trial," she said.
A spokeswoman for Del Ponte later clarified that she was not handing over the running for a trial to Serbia, but merely responsibility for an ongoing UN investigation into a war crimes suspect.
Del Ponte, who works at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, arrived in Belgrade earlier Friday to attend a conference on war crimes.
She was booed by a small group of supporters of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, the top war crimes suspect on trial at The Hague.
Del Ponte is due to return to Belgrade on Monday for meetings with Serbian President Boris Tadic and Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica amid mounting international pressure for Serbia to hand over one of the top suspects still at large, former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic.
Some 20 indictees, including four Serbian generals, are still at large in Serbia but Kostunica has said national stability is more important than their arrest and transfer to The Hague.
"I have no problem with the judicial authorities and I would be happy if I had no problems when I meet political authorities on Monday," Del Ponte said.
Mladic and Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic were charged in 1995 with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bosnia's 1992-95 war, notably the massacre of some 7,000 Muslims in the eastern town of Srebrenica.
The four Serbian generals were indicted last year for their roles in the 1998-99 Kosovo conflict between Belgrade forces and separatist ethnic Albanians.
A Serbian court issued warrants for their arrests only this week but so far they remain comfortably at large. Del Ponte insisted the generals must be tried at The Hague.
A spokesman for the Serbian war crimes court, Bruno Vekaric, said no other former Yugoslav republic had been permitted to try a war crimes suspect indicted by the ICTY.
"This is the first case in the whole of ex-Yugoslavia that The Hague tribunal is transferring to a local jurisdiction," he said.
Del Ponte said before her talks with Vukcevic that Serbian courts had to prove they were ready to handle complicated and politically sensitive war crimes cases.
"Local prosecutors and judges have to be focused more and more on building capacity for domestic war crimes prosecutions," she said, adding such cases would be "a very serious test" for domestic courts and institutions.
Her trip came a day after US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman and the US senior envoy for war crimes, Pierre-Richard Prosper, visited Belgrade to step up pressure on Serbia to arrest war crimes suspects.
Grossman told reporters after meeting Serbian leaders that "the deadline was yesterday" for arresting Mladic, and warned Serbia that it faced international isolation if it continued to obstruct the UN tribunal at The Hague.