UN Council Powers Give Annan OK for Baghdad

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The permanent five Security Council members on Tuesday gave
Secretary-General Kofi Annan the green light for a trip to Baghdad to try to head off a military
strike, they told reporters.

Annan said he expected to be in the Iraqi capital Friday.

He met with the five permanent members -- the United States, Britain, France, China and Russia --
after which he briefed the other 10 council members.

Unclear was how much negotiating leeway Annan would have to avert a military action by the United
States and Britain. His guidelines from the five countries were given orally.

But U.S. Ambassador Bill Richardson said Washington reserved the right to disagree if it considered
the outcome of his mission inconsistent with U.S. national interests.

"The United States is supportive of his trip," said Richardson. "We wish him well."

"But we reserve the right to disagree if the conclusion of the trip is not consistent with Security
Council resolutions and our own national interest," he said.

Annan is trying to head off military action by the United States and Britain to force Iraq to allow
U.N. inspectors unimpeded access to so-called "presidential and sovereign sites" in search of
weapons of mass destruction and related documents.

British Ambassador Sir John Weston told reporters: "We have conveyed to the secretary general
our agreed advice to him in preparation for his visit to Baghdad."

"He knows the view of most members of the council. He knows the Security Council resolutions. He
knows his own authority. And we know that he is a very senior person in this organization who was
elected by us all, and we have great confidence in his judgment," he said.

"The secretary general does not need to be dictated to but he has turned to the Security Council for
advice and so far as the permanent five are concerned he has that advice. And also has, I should
say, our confidence."

The other three permanent members are France, Russia and China.

Annan has been under pressure from nearly every country in the world to go to Baghdad.

Tuesday's round of talks among the five permanent members was the fourth in a week.

Before Tuesday's session, diplomats said the United States wanted to give Annan a written message
with strict instructions they feared would ties his hands.

But the final advice was conveyed orally by the five to Annan and it is unclear if Washington was
more flexible in its position.

Shortly before the five met, Annan saw Thomas Pickering, a former U.N. ambassador and now the
undersecretary of state for political affairs, the number three official in the U.S. State Department.

Tuesday February 17 3:58 PM EST

Bosnian Serbs Deny War Crimes Charges

By Andrew Kelly

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (Reuters) - Two Bosnian Serbs pleaded not guilty to war crimes
charges Tuesday but openly thanked U.S. diplomats and NATO troops to whom they surrendered
Saturday.

Miroslav Tadic, 60, and Milan Simic, 37, are the first Bosnian Serbs to turn themselves over
voluntarily to the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

In a brief initial appearance before the U.N. court, both men denied charges that they had taken part
in a campaign of terror in 1992 aimed at driving Muslims and Croats away from their homes in the
Bosnian town of Bosanski Samac.

U.N. prosecutors allege that Tadic planned and prepared the expulsion from the area of hundreds of
Croats and Muslims, including women, children and the elderly.

They allege that Simic took part in the repeated beating of a Muslim man with iron bars and chair
legs.

The indictment against the two men -- and four others who remain at large -- said Serbs seized
control of Bosanski Samac in April 1992 and began persecuting Croat and Muslim residents.

It said Croats and Muslims had made up over half of the local population of 33,000 in 1991 but that
fewer than 300 remained by mid-1995.

Tadic and Simic turned themselves in to U.S. diplomats and NATO-led SFOR peacekeeping troops
in Bosnia Saturday, saying they were innocent and wanted to clear their names.

They arrived at the tribunal's detention center on the outskirts of The Hague just after midnight
Sunday.

In off-the-cuff remarks to the tribunal, Tadic thanked U.S. diplomats for arranging his passage to
The Hague and joked that he would like to settle in the city once he had been acquitted.

Simic, who was has been confined to a wheelchair since a 1993 car accident, thanked SFOR troops
in Bosnia and staff at the tribunal's detention center who he said had shown special consideration for
his handicap.

Judge Claude Jorda of France, who presided over Tuesday's hearing, did not set a date for the start
of their trial.

Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour has hailed the surrender of the two suspects as particularly
significant because it signaled a willingness on the part of the Bosnian Serbs to cooperate with the
tribunal after several years of defiance.