Ivashov was chief of the Department for International Military Cooperation at the Russian Defence Ministry in 1998/99, coordinating Russia's efforts in Kosovo.
Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice asked the witness to provide evidence for his allegation that the US had a plan for intervention in Kosovo already in 1997.
Ivashov said that in 1997 Washington declared the Balkans a zone of vital interest in which military intervention was an option, and that it had originally planned both airstrikes and a ground operation against the rump Yugoslav federation of Serbia and Montenegro.
Speaking of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Verification Mission in Kosovo, the Russian general said that it was full of Western intelligence agents gathering information for airstrikes.
The witness declined to respond to the prosecutor's request that he provide physical evidence of his testimony or present information obtained by monitoring conversations, possibly even about the genocide in Srebrenica. Ivashov then said he did not have the authority to testify about Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Ivashov also refused to talk about numerous mass graves that had emerged in Serbia, which were supposed to conceal evidence of Serb crimes in Kosovo.
He spoke of an incident that occurred in 1999 before the deployment of NATO troops in the province, when Russian soldiers took positions at Pristina airport, saying that they had acted on the orders of former president Boris Yeltsin.
A video tape was played in the courtroom showing Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov apologising for the deployment of Russian forces in Pristina and saying that it was a mistake. The video tape also showed Ivashov when he said that Yeltsin was happy about the Russian operation. The witness explained that on the video he was holding a written order issued by Yeltsin.
Prosecutor Nice pointed out that Ivashov had opposed all compromise solutions proposed by the Kosovo Contact Group, and that his accusations against NATO and the OSCE mission were unfounded and lacking evidence.
The next defence witness will be former Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov, who will give testimony on November 30.