BELGRADE, April 11: Former Serbian interior minister Vlajko Stojiljkovic, facing handover to the UN war crimes tribunal, shot himself in the head outside the Yugoslav parliament on Thursday, a minister and witnesses said.

A Tribunal official in The Hague expressed shock and said the UN court had expected a peaceful transfer following passage of a controversial emergency law adopted under overt Western pressure for compliance with the tribunal.

Stojiljkovic, who served under ousted Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, shot himself hours after parliament approved a law clearing the way for the transfer of war crimes suspects already indicted by the UN body.

The act was passed despite a rearguard battle by nationalist Serb politicians who called it a sell-out to Western pressure and a shameful failure to resist economic blackmail by the United States, which had cut off aid to force extradition.

“He said a long time ago he would not surrender to the tribunal alive. All this is a consequence of adoption of this law,” said Ivica Dacic, a senior official of Milosevic’s Socialist Party, of which Stojiljkovic is also a member.

Local media said Stojiljkovic, one of three Milosevic-era officials widely seen as prime candidates for extradition after the law was passed, was taken to a Belgrade emergency hospital in critical condition and was on life support.

“It’s a serious head injury...of course, his life is in danger,” hospital director Mihajlo Mitrovic told television.—Reuters