Belgrade, February 13th (Tanjug) - Trying former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic at home would be "the best and fairest" thing to do, while "blackmailing Yugoslavia into cooperation with the war crimes court is unnecessary, as this is our international obligation anyway", according to Yugoslavia's president.

Vojislav Kostunica told a regular monthly news conference today that European and world officials he had met had raised no conditions for giving assistance to Yugoslavia. However, Kostunica added, "there are extremist positions" in the international community "and still more here at home that cooperation with the tribunal in the Hague is in the vital national interest".

"It is surprising that our public should put interpretations on the matter that go to the detriment of the national interests", he said, listing as "priority national interests preserving and defining what Yugoslavia is as a state".

Attaining this interest, he added, should in no way jeopardize a federal unit's right to independence if a majority of its population should wish it.

He stressed that settling the matter of relations between Yugoslavia's federal units Serbia and Montenegro should be followed by a constitutional reconstruction of Serbia. In this context, he noted that the existing Serbian constitution, promulgated in 1990, was "anachronous, since it was passed by a one-party parliament of one of the six republics of the then Yugoslavia".

Speaking about the situation in southern Serbia, Kostunica said that "use of force is least advisable" in the area, because "we must first give peace a chance".

He described the program for settling the southern Serbia crisis proposed by Serbian Vice-Premier Nebojsa Covic as "an important document, since it deals with the complexity of both the consequences and the causes of terrorism".

In Kostunica's view, the role of the international community in the region is to promote dialogue, as well as to help ethnic Albanians "produce negotiators" who would champion the interests of the nation - coexistence, not violence. Kostunica stressed there could be no negotiation with terrorists. He said a solution lay in scrapping the Ground Safety Zone which separates U.N.-administered Kosovo-Metohija from the rest of Serbia, narrowing it down or moving a section of it into the territory of Kosovo-Metohija, where "it might be patrolled jointly by the Yugoslav army and the international force KFOR, our police and U.N. mission (UNMIK) police".

About the Kosovo problem, he said "it will take patience and respect for U.N. Resolution 1244" to settle it, stressing that the resolution envisages for the return of 226,000 displaced Kosovo Serbs, Montenegrins and other non-Albanians, and if the Yugoslav Army.

Referring to the situation in northern Kosovo, Kostunica said there should be no hasty moves, and compromises must be striven for.

In answer to reporters' questions, he said Yugoslavia would not officially demand reparation for damage caused by NATO in the course of its air strikes in 1999. According to him, it is much more effective to keep reminding the world of the damage and of the political accountability of the perpetrators.

Saying that "merely a fraction (of the damage) will be indemnified", he noted that Yugoslavia was not the only one with obligations, that the international community, too, had obligations towards Yugoslavia. He went on to say that the international community "gave war, not peace, a chance" both with its 1999 air campaign, and with its unconsidered decisions of 1991 and 1992.