Serbia`s need of economic aid and the prospect of renewed international isolation are again pushing it to surrender war crimes suspects, not a newfound willingness to confront the truth about past atrocities.
In a now familiar scenario, the reformers who ousted Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic after a bloodstained decade in power face a stark choice between assisting the UN war crimes tribunal or losing crucial Western financial support.
Due to disagreements among leading politicians, Yugoslavia and its dominant republic Serbia missed a US deadline last Sunday to demonstrate cooperation with the tribunal and found aid from Washington worth about $40 million frozen.
Officials have, however, signalled that people accused by the court in The Hague will soon be handed over, stressing Belgrade`s need for money rather than the need for justice.
"Without pressure nothing would happen. They would never do it willingly," said Sonja Biserko at the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia, a non-governmental organisation. "Cooperation with The Hague is presented as a necessary evil."
Threatened with a similar ultimatum in March last year, the authorities arrested Milosevic just ahead of Washington`s deadline. Three months later, he was shipped to the tribunal, a day before a donors` conference which yielded $1.3 billion.
Appearing to act only when its arm is twisted, the country has yet to launch the soul-searching about its role in the Balkan wars of the 1990s which human rights activists and others say is needed for true reconciliation.
"It is very regrettable that Yugoslavia seems to cooperate only because of economic factors and pressure from the international community," said Matias Hellman, a Belgrade-based official of the UN tribunal.
"In this society there is not much discussion about the alleged war crimes that were committed," he said.
Handing over fellow Serbs indicted by the tribunal is a politically explosive issue which has deepened divisions among Yugoslavia`s pro-democracy leaders who united to topple Milosevic in a mass uprising in October 2000.
Their heated row has focused on avoiding the kind of damaging Western sanctions Yugoslavia suffered under Milosevic and not on the need to examine killings and other crimes by Serb forces during the break-up of old socialist Yugoslavia.
"When they talk about The Hague our politicians never mention justice, the need for national moral catharsis, the necessity to give satisfaction to the victims` families," said well-known Yugoslav analyst Aleksa Djilas.
"There is only talk about loans, that America is strong and that we should listen to them," he told daily Vecernje Novosti.
Natasa Kandic, a human rights activist who heads the Humanitarian Law Centre in the Yugoslav capital, stressed the need to accept responsibility for war crimes in order to create a future society based on the rule of law.
"Without recognising the pain of other victims, the process of reconciliation with others is impossible," she said.
But, Kandic added, everybody who tries to speak in public about Serb war crimes is branded a traitor.
Many Serbs regard the UN court as biased against them, a view that appears to have gained ground as a result of Milosevic`s vigorous and defiant defence at his trial in The Hague court, which got under way in February.
Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica struck a nationalist chord when suggesting at the weekend that national dignity was more important than an "uncertain dollar amount".
Kostunica, a self-professed moderate nationalist, says he favours cooperation even if the tribunal makes his "stomach turn" but insists a domestic law is needed to regulate it.
This prompted his arch-rival Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic, seen as a pragmatist pushing for Western-style economic reform, to accuse the president of cowardice and expecting others to do dirty work for him.
Milosevic was the last Yugoslav citizen to be transferred to the tribunal from Belgrade.
If Serbian leaders find a way to hand over more suspects, three Milosevic-era officials accused with the former president of war crimes in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo in 1999 are widely seen as the most likely candidates.
That would leave other suspects, including wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and military chief Ratko Mladic, still at large in Yugoslavia or in Bosnia`s Serb republic - raising the prospect of new Western ultimatums and deadlines.