THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Jan 22(Hina) - Continuing his testimony against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic before the Hague war crimes tribunal on Thursday, prosecution witness Hrvoje Sarinic told the defendant he had been
implicated in the war in Croatia up to his neck.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Jan 22(Hina) - Continuing his testimony against
former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic before the Hague war
crimes tribunal on Thursday, prosecution witness Hrvoje Sarinic told
the defendant he had been implicated in the war in Croatia up to his
neck.#L#
"You were implicated up to your neck. The leadership in Knin couldn't
do anything without getting the green light from you," said Sarinic,
late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman's cabinet chief during the
1990s and one of his closest aides.
Between 1993 and 1995 Sarinic led Croatia's secret diplomatic bids to
step up the solving of the problem of occupied territories and
normalise relations with Serbia through direct negotiations with
Milosevic. In his testimony he has given the prosecution significant
evidence proving that Milosevic had controlled the Serb leaders in
Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina and discussed the partition of Bosnia
with Tudjman.
After completing the main part of his testimony behind closed doors
today, Sarinic was cross-examined by Milosevic. The two fiercely
disagreed about a series of issues, from the cause of the
disintegration of socialist Yugoslavia, the Greater Serbia project,
the Serb revolt in Croatia, the war and the occupation of Croatian
territories, to Flash and Storm, operations which liberated those
territories in 1995.
Sarinic dismissed Milosevic's attempts to attribute responsibility for
the Serb revolt and the war in Croatia to Croatian authorities' moves
as well as suggestions that the planned ethnic cleansing of Serbs was
carried out during the liberation of occupied territories in 1995.
Sarinic countered Milosevic's assertion that the unlawful secession of
Slovenia and Croatia, with help from Germany and the Vatican, was to
blame for Yugoslavia's break-up by stating that the cause of the
disintegration had been the Greater Serbia project.
"Greater Serbia was never our policy, what gave you that idea?" asked
Milosevic, to which Sarinic replied that "that's a historical process
from 'Nacertanije' (a 19th century document) to the SANU (Serbian
Academy of Arts and Sciences) Memorandum". "You were behind (the Serb
revolt) and the occupation of one-third of Croatian territory," he
said but Milosevic countered by stating that Serbia had not had
territorial aspirations towards Croatia.
Milosevic quoted from transcripts of sessions of Croatia's Defence and
National Security Council from the 1990s, suggesting that Croatian
authorities had planned the ethnic cleansing of Serbs.
"You are alluding to genocide, which is unacceptable. In those
dramatic moments Croatia did not want Serbs to leave. Plans for the
evacuation of the Serb population had been drawn up by local Serb
leaders in late 1993," Sarinic said. "Let's not forget that Croatia
was the victim of aggression, that everything was taking place on its
territory, and never on even one square metre of Serbia."
Milosevic stressed his efforts aimed at the reaching of a peace
agreement between Knin and Zagreb, while Sarinic said that after an
agreement had been reached Croatia "was tricked in everything every
time" which was why it had resorted to the military solution.
Sarinic agreed with the defendant only when he said that he had had
nothing to do with the attack on southern Croatia's Dubrovnik. "I
don't believe that you organised that but you did know about the
attack," he said, adding that he thought General Blagoje Adzic, the
then Yugoslav People's Army chief of staff, had been behind the
attack.
The prosecution entered two written statements by Sarinic into
evidence.
(Hina) ha sb