THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Feb 13 (Hina) - Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who is standing trial before the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, on Thursday cross-examined "the key prosecution witness", General Aleksandar
Vasiljevic, a former head of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) counter-intelligence service.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Feb 13 (Hina) - Former Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic, who is standing trial before the U.N. war
crimes tribunal in The Hague, on Thursday cross-examined "the key
prosecution witness", General Aleksandar Vasiljevic, a former head
of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) counter-intelligence service.
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Vasiljevic, who headed the JNA Security Administration (formerly
known as KOS) in 1991 and 1992, and was deputy head of the same
service in the Yugoslav Army (JV) in 1999, today most directly
incriminated Milosevic with regard to his command responsibility
from indictments for crimes committed in Croatia and Kosovo.
Cross-examining the witness, Milosevic said it had been the JNA and
the Presidency of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
(SFRY) and not him as president of Serbia who had powers over
Serbia's Territorial Defence (TO) units.
The witness replied that "regulations are one thing, and practice
another" and that what Milosevic was saying would apply "in a normal
situation, with the SFRY and its presidency being whole".
Milosevic tried to discredit Vasiljevic's testimony about the
involvement of the Serbian police and state security service in
organising volunteer units by claiming that "volunteers were
organised by opposition parties which had been trying to topple me
for ten years".
Vasiljevic then quoted a statement by Radical Party leader Vojislav
Seselj to the BBC, who said that volunteers had been sent to the
front in line with instructions by Jovica Stanisic, a senior state
security service official. Speaking about Arkan's "Tigers",
Vasiljevic said that they had been "fully controlled by the Serbian
Interior Ministry and possessed official Ministry documents".
Seeing that his questioning the witness's credibility would not
yield any results, Milosevic tried to discredit Vasiljevic by
stating that he was saying "what somebody else said to somebody
else", that he was "incompetent to be a general" and that his
conclusions "were not that insightful".
Milosevic spent a lot of time trying to prove that the JNA had not
commanded Croatian and Bosnian Serb armies, not denying its
"financial assistance" to the two armies. He also dismissed being
responsible for the purging of JNA generals in 1992 and exercising
influence on the military leadership.
The witness disproved his claims by enumerating cases when JNA
officers were exposed to intensive pressure to join Croatian and
Bosnian Serb army ranks, as well as examples of "ethnic cleansing"
in the army, when he was requested to "dismiss all generals who were
not Serbs and Montenegrins".
He mentioned the replacement of Croat General Zvonko Jurjevic, an
air force commander in 1992, who was "persecuted in Belgrade as a
traitor and is more Yugoslav than I am".
In the first part of today's testimony Vasiljevic spoke about co-
ordination between the JV and the Serbian Interior Ministry in
operations in Kosovo in 1999, the chain-of-command and the role of
some officers. He also testified about some crimes committed by the
JV and volunteers in Kosovo and investigations into those crimes,
as well as about the role of Serbian special police and intelligence
units. The cross-examination continues on Friday and Monday.
(hina) rml sb