ICTY: DR. VESNA BOSANAC ENDS TESTIMONY

THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Feb 5 (Hina) - Dr. Vesna Bosanac, head of the Vukovar hospital at the time of the Serb siege of the town in 1991, ended her testimony at the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Wednesday. #L# In the closing part of the testimony Bosanac was cross-examined by Milosevic, who waived the right to legal counsel and is defending himself. As yesterday, cross-examining the witness, Milosevic did not present evidence questioning the credibility of Bosanac's statement about the victims of the three-month siege of Vukovar, but was reading excerpts from statements given by imprisoned Vukovar residents to investigators in Serbian prisons and articles from the Serbian press. He dedicated most time to Bosanac's 112- page statement, given in a prison in Sremska Mitrovica and a military investigative prison in Belgrade. Asked by Milosevic if the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) had protected the local population from violence, Dr. Bosanac replied that the JNA had shelled Vukovar "killing innocent women and children every day". Milosevic then read the part of her statement in which she says that the JNA protected people from extremist and nationalist elements. Bosanac said the statement had been given in prison under pressure and that the JNA had allowed paramilitary units to kill more than 300 people once the town was occupied. Quoting statements by some doctors and other people from Vukovar, given in the Serbian prisons and to the Serbian press, Milosevic levelled a number of accusations against Bosanac and the leaders of Vukovar's defence on their using the hospital for military purposes, on members of the National Guard Corps (ZNG) dressing in patient clothes, on Serb doctors being laid off and wounded Serbs being denied medical help and killed. Bosanac refuted Milosevic's claims, saying that the statements had been extorted and misused by the Serbian media. (hina) rml sb