MILOSEVIC TRIAL: CROATIAN PRESIDENT'S ADVISER CONTINUES TESTIMONY

THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, June 27 (Hina) - The Croatian president's adviser on national security, Imra Agotic, told the Hague war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on Friday the ex-federation's army, JNA, had thwarted all agreements on the evacuation of the wounded from Vukovar's hospital in late 1991. #L# Prosecutor Hildegard Uertz Retzlaff asked about compliance with a 18 November 1991 agreement signed by Croatia's then Health Minister Andrija Hebrang and chief JNA negotiator Andrija Raseta, under which Croatia and the JNA guaranteed the neutrality of Vukovar's hospital. "The JNA didn't respect that," Agotic said, adding the former Yugoslav People's Army did not respect other accords on evacuation routes for the sick and wounded from the hospital either. In 1991, when negotiations with the JNA were underway for it to withdraw from Croatia, Agotic was Croatia's chief negotiator in the matter. Negotiations with the JNA's Raseta were brokered by the European Community Monitoring Mission in Zagreb's I Hotel from 8 October 1991 until the end of the year. Letters and protest notes requesting the JNA to stop attacking Vukovar were introduced as evidence during Agotic's testimony in the trial of ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The witness said that during the negotiations he had been constantly lodging protests over JNA and Serb troops' attacks on Croatian towns and villages and the expulsion of the Croatian population. He said before the war there had been intolerance towards Serb nationalism within the JNA but at the onset of the war this changed and Serb nationalists started ascending the ranks to senior commanding positions. Agotic said he was replaced on 2 March 1991, and that the JNA and its Security Service was purged of non-Serbs and those who were against supporting the Movement for Yugoslavia, a newly-formed political party. In 1991 Agotic received information from the federal defence ministry's political and security bureaux about plans to put the entire Croatia under JNA control. "That was a plan which existed in the second half of '91, later to be corrected so they switched to plan B, as I called it, to put Croatia under control all the way to the Virovitica-Karlovac-Karlobag line". That plan was corrected too and they switched to plan C, under which the JNA, assisted by rebel Serbs, was to have gained control over Croatian territory with a majority Serb population, said Agotic. Among documents seized after the JNA barracks in Samobor was captured, he saw a JNA General Staff plan on taking control of Croatia's borders. The document was not introduced as evidence today because the witness had been unable to find it, the prosecution said. Some parts of the plan to gain control over and cut Croatia in two were realised, for example on the Knin Zadar line and the blockade of Dubrovnik in the south, but the entire plan could not be carried out because of resistance put up by Croatian troops and the fact that the JNA had not succeeded in fully mobilising forces, said Agotic. He described how reports about crimes were sent from the field to the top on the chain of command within the JNA Security Service. The prosecution introduced reports about crimes in Skabrnja and Bruska, which had been sent to the command of the Ninth Knin Corps. Cross-examining the witness, Milosevic tried to elicit confirmation for his claim that Albanian nationalism posed a major threat in the 1980s and 1990s. "I've been looking at that a little differently for a long time," Agotic said, adding he also doubted the veracity of claims made in the past against a group of Albanian JNA commanders, among them Rahim Ademi, who had been accused of spreading Albanian nationalism. Milosevic tried to extort from Agotic confirmation of his claim that at the start of the 1990s the JNA was only trying to preserve the integrity of socialist Yugoslavia and not impose Serb domination and separate parts of Croatia. (hina) ha sb