PROSECUTION: MILOSEVIC CERTAINLY KNEW ABOUT CRIMES

THE HAGUE, Feb 12 (Hina) - The chief prosecutor in the Milosevic trial, Britain's Geoffrey Nice, started his opening statement at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Tuesday with a description of the suffering of Vukovar Croats on Ovcara farm. In the opening statement, the prosecution presents evidence to the Trial Chamber backing up indictments charging the former president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, with genocide in Bosnia- Herzegovina and crimes against humanity in Croatia and Kosovo. Six imprisoned Croats were lucky and survived Ovcara. The other 260 were killed, Nice said. This is just one example of the suffering on the indictment for Croatia where thousands of people were killed during the conflicts, and 170,000 were forced out, the prosecutor said. Illustrating crimes in Bosnia, Nice described how a young woman ran from Visegrad before the conquering forces of the Yugoslav army and the Serb "White Eagles" troops into a forest to bear her child. Several days later, along with other women and her newly born baby, the woman was burnt alive in a house. The crime is only one example of the suffering in Bosnia in which thousands were killed, and 200,000 to 300,000 people were forced out, Nice said. He also described the deaths of a woman and her child seven years later in Kosovo. For the trial, one of the chief questions is "did he (Milosevic) know what was happening? Of course he did," Nice said. In his opening statement, Nice described in detail Milosevic's political rise and the political circumstances in the region of the former Yugoslavia at the end of the 80s and the start of the 1990s. From constitutional changes in 1974 when provinces in Serbia were granted autonomy, through strikes and protests in Kosovo during which the motto "Kosovo - Republic" was shouted repeatedly, to Milosevic's well-known public speeches and the liquidation of his political mentor Ivan Stambolic, Nice described the political events in the area of the former Yugoslavia which led to its disintegration. The prosecutor illustrated his descriptions with filmed excerpts of Milosevic's speeches, including the one in 1987 celebrating the 600th anniversary of the battle at Kosovo Polje against the Turks, which the Serbs lost, when Milosevic, the then Serbian president, told the Serbs "nobody is allowed to beat you", in fact announcing war. Explaining to the Trial Chamber the ways in which Milosevic controlled and steered events, Nice said a member of the Yugoslav Presidency, Borislav Jovic, was a key figure through which Milosevic controlled the Presidency and the Yugoslav armed forces. The Serb leadership, which included Jovic and the then defence minister, Veljko Kadijevic, agreed that the amputation of parts of Yugoslavia should be done in such a way so as to have Serb municipalities remain within Yugoslavia. This is the very issue which will explain territorial aggression and crimes against humanity, Nice said. He explained that the role of Yugoslav General Blagoje Adzic was to make sure that the Yugoslav troops disabled Croatian police and their attempt of taking control over towns under Serb control. Milosevic "did not confront his victims. He had these crimes committed for him by others," Nice said. The prosecution on Tuesday also began laying out the evidence connecting Milosevic with the crimes. The Chamber heard secret recordings of talks between Milosevic and the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic about what should be done. Nice said the model, which was also used on Croatia, was to have the Yugoslav People's Army involved and fight Croatian police forces just when Serb troops were achieving their first results on the field, so these results could be consolidated. Nice also described how political agreements were made parallel with conflicts in the field. He mentioned negotiations in Karadjordjevo in March 1991 when Milosevic promised the then Croatian president to let him have Croatia's Banovina region as it was in 1939. Ethnic cleansing in Croatia was carried out by troops on orders by the indicted, with the aim of realising the idea of a Greater Serbia, Nice said. A piece of evidence speaking about Milosevic's role in crimes in Croatia is a report from a meeting of local Croatian Serb leaders, according to which Milosevic, the then president of Serbia, asked them to refrain from fighting Croatian police and leave it up to the Yugoslav army. Milosevic requested that they also boycott the referendum in Croatia but fictively resume talks with Croatia's leadership, while consulting with Milosevic about further steps. The Serbian president informed the local Serb leaders that Stjepan Mesic would get the seat of chairman of the Yugoslav Presidency. The occupation of parts of Croatia started the brutal persecution of non-Serbs, Nice stated. Although there was provocation and crime on the Croat side, nothing reached such extents, he said. The prosecution also played a tape of people leaving Croatia's eastern city of Vukovar in files, which left Milosevic wrapped in thought and staring at the screen even after the tape stopped playing. Although Milosevic never publicly explained the crime, an explanation was offered in what followed, Nice said, recalling that three chief indictees for the crimes against Vukovar, Sljivancanin, Mrksic and Radic, never answered for the crimes, the latter even being decorated. Milosevic also soon promoted a Serb leader who was in Vukovar the day the city fell, Goran Hadzic, to the post of president of the Serb parastate in Croatia. Among the evidence Nice described was an agreement on a loan the Serbian Defence Ministry granted to the "Krajina" Serb parastate in Croatia for financing the army and police. As Serbian president, Milosevic was directly responsible for this, Nice stressed. Pointing out the problems the prosecution had in collecting evidence, Nice said Milosevic left no trails behind him if he was not forced to, or destroyed them. He also avoided big meetings. Instead, he held tete-a-tete meetings at which he gave orders. (hina) lml sb