PERISIC DENIES HE HAS BEEN CALLED TO TESTIFY IN MILOSEVIC TRIAL

BELGRADE, Feb 4(Hina) - A former Yugoslav army chief of staff, General Momcilo Perisic, on Wednesday denied having received a summons to testify in the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic before the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.#L# Speaking at a press conference in Belgrade, Perisic also declined either to confirm or deny reports that he had recently visited The Hague, or say whether he had met tribunal investigators and whether he was under investigation. "I don't know if I'm under investigation. Perhaps you, journalists, know that better than I do," Perisic said at the headquarters of his party, the Movement for a Democratic Serbia. Perisic reiterated his readiness to cooperate with the Hague tribunal if so asked, because the tribunal "is unavoidable and must be respected by every politician". He noted that as a member of the federal parliament he himself had voted for the law on cooperation with the tribunal. "All sides committed crimes and it is necessary that people who have the information give arguments so that the real culprits can be punished and the innocent ones set free," he said. Perisic was sentenced in absentia by a Croatian court to 20 years' imprisonment for war crimes committed in Croatia in the first half of the 1990s. (Hina) vm