FRENCH MEDIA EXPERT ENDS TESTIMONY AT MILOSEVIC TRIAL

THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, May 26 (Hina) - A French media expert, witness for the prosecution of the U.N. war crimes tribunal (ICTY), Renaud de la Brosse, on Monday completed his testimony at the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. #L# Milosevic attempted to discredit de la Brosse's report on years of propaganda in ex-Yugoslavia entitled "Media in the Heart of the Yugoslav War" by claiming the author was ignorant of the language, selected biased sources and doctored findings. Cross-examining the witness, Milosevic singled out the titles of some articles by foreign journalists cited in the report, branding them as "examples of hatred towards the Serb people and myself". He cited titles such as "Serbia -- the Black Hole of the Balkans" (unofficial translation), or his biography entitled "Opportunistic Monster" (unofficial translation). He especially slammed a book by the ICTY prosecution's spokeswoman, Florence Hartmann, "Milosevic, la diagonale du fou", for "hatred and lies". Hartmann wrote the book in Belgrade in the 1990s as a correspondent for Paris's Le Monde. She refused to give a comment for Hina on Milosevic's attack on her book. De la Brosse rejected Milosevic's claims that Serb media had not stigmatised the Croat people as a whole, citing a number of examples of the creation of a "historic amalgam" -- equating Croatian authorities from the 1990s with those from the 1941-45 Independent State of Croatia (NDH), and the constant connecting of the genocide of Serbs during WWII with preparations for "genocide against Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina". De la Brosse again quoted statements by Jovan Raskovic and Dobrica Cosic about Croats being genocidal. He also cited an example from Hartmann's book about the simultaneous broadcast of the late Croatian president Franjo Tudjman's speeches and those of NDH leader Ante Pavelic on Television Belgrade. (hina) lml sb