TWO PROSECUTION WITNESSES SPEAK AT MILOSEVIC TRIAL

THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Dec 10 (Hina) - The prosecution in ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's trial before the Hague tribunal on Wednesday called protected witness B-1011 and Mehmed Music, who spoke about war crimes Serb troops committed in Brcko and around Sarajevo in Bosnia in the spring of 1992. #L# The Trial Chamber also deliberated whether 245 intercepted telephone conversations made by the defendant constituted valid evidence. The prosecution introduced them last week through the testimony of one protected witness. Cross-examining today's two witnesses, Milosevic insisted on details from their written statements which he said made no sense or were imprecise. During the debate on the evidence, amicus curiae Steven Kay questioned the authenticity of the recorded conversations and the legality of the recording. Milosevic maintained the conversations were not valid as evidence at all. "I'm absolutely convinced the conversations were tampered with and edited, and that they come from a secret service that dealt in doctoring to justify the policy of its government and the support for the secession." He said the evidence had been fabricated to shift responsibility onto the other side, that it had been ill-intentioned and part of a conspiracy. The chief prosecutor in the case, Geoffrey Nice, said the evidence consisted of recordings and transcripts of 245 conversations held by the defendant which covered his cooperation with the other participants in the joint criminal enterprise, political planning, military planning, and execution. Nice said the witness who had brought them had confirmed their authenticity and said they were legal because former Yugoslavia's Constitution allowed phone-tapping. The evidence is irrefutable, Nice said, recalling that the defendant had been unable to single out even one allegedly fabricated conversation, with the exception of one that had been wrongly dated. (hina) ha sb