In the continuation of the trial, judges heard Mitar Balevic, former leader of the Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) branch in Kosovo, who denied that Serbian forces conducted an ethnic cleansing campaign against Kosovo's majority Albanian population during NATO's bombing raids in 1999.
Responding to questions by Milosevic, who refuses to be represented by court-assigned counsel and conducts his own defence, Balevic said that Serbian security forces were "only responding to attacks by Albanian terrorists and were protecting both the Serbian and Albanian civilian population".
During the cross-examination by prosecutor Geoffrey Nice, the witness frequently protested against the questions and refused to answer them.
Milosevic is charged with the persecution, deportation and forcible transfer of about 800,000 ethnic Albanians and the killing of hundreds of Albanian civilians as part of a joint criminal enterprise aimed at placing the province under permanent Serbian control.
Milosevic announced the former Yugoslav foreign minister and ambassador to the United Nations, Vladislav Jovanovic, as his next witness.
Tribunal president Theodor Meron today confirmed an earlier decision by the tribunal's Registry rejecting a request by court-assigned British defence attorneys Steven Kay and Gillian Higgins to withdraw from the Milosevic trial.
Meron said it would not be in the interests of justice to allow them to withdraw although the two lawyers claimed that they could not do their job because Milosevic refused to cooperate with them.
The tribunal imposed defence counsel on Milosevic in September 2004 to prevent any further delays in the trial owing to the poor health of the accused. The trial opened in early 2002.