"I would like to tell my comrades-in-arms who are indicted and at large, to surrender voluntarily and as soon as possible so as to remove the mill-stone around the neck of our country and all others in our neighbourhood," said the 65-year-old Beara at his first appearance before ICTY judges on Tuesday.
Beara, who turned himself to Serbia's authorities last weekend and was immediately transferred to The Hague, on Tuesday used his right not to enter a plea at his initial appearance. His lawyer Gregor Guy-Smith asked for a postponement and Judge Ian Bonomy scheduled Beara's plea entry for 9 November.
The Hague tribunal indicted Beara, born in Sarajevo in 1939, on 26 March 2002, charging him with six counts of genocide and participation in genocide, extermination, murder, persecution on political, racial and religious grounds, and forcible relocation of the Muslim population of the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica between 12 and 19 July 1995.
At the time covered by the indictment, Colonel Beara was chief of security at the Bosnian Serb Army General Staff, in charge, among other things, of Muslims captured in Srebrenica.
Under the indictment, Beara was a member and key figure of a joint criminal enterprise aimed at forcibly relocating women and children from Srebrenica to Kladanj on 12 and 13 July 1995, and at capturing, imprisoning, shooting dead, burying and reburying thousands of Muslim men aged between 16 and 60.
The indictment says more than 7,000 captured Muslims were killed on that occasion and that this represents the worst war crime committed in Europe since World War Two.
Beara was mentioned as one of the crucial figures in the killing of Srebrenica Muslims by former Bosnian Serb officials Momir Nikolic and Miroslav Deronjic, whom the Hague tribunal sentenced to 27 and 10 years' imprisonment respectively after they pleaded guilty.
The other figures accused by the Hague tribunal of participation in the Srebrenica genocide are former Bosnian Serb political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, as well as army officers Vinko Pandurevic, Drago Nikolic, Vujadin Popovic, and Ljubisa Borovcanin, all of whom remain at large.
So far, the only final verdict for the Srebrenica massacre was passed in the case of Radislav Krstic, who on 19 April this year was sentenced by the ICTY to 35 years in jail. General Krstic is a former commander of the Bosnian Serb Drina Corps.