PROSECUTOR: MOST CRUEL CRIMES IN CROATIA, BOSNIA OCCURRED ALONG BORDER WITH SERBIA

THE HAGUE, Feb 13 (Hina) - The most brutal ethnic cleansing and the most horrendous crimes in Croatia and Bosnia happened directly along the border with Serbia, with whose help this occurred, the chief prosecutor in the case of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, Geoffrey Nice, said on Wednesday, the second day of the trial before the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Milosevic is being charged with ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and crimes against humanity in Croatia and Kosovo. Not only did military and financial assistance derive from Serbia, via the republic's defence and interior ministries and paramilitary troops, but Serbia's territory was also used for cannon attacks which had no military justification. Its goal was to ethnically cleanse areas to adhere them to Serbia, Nice said. Some of the most memorable examples of Serbia's involvement in crimes in Bosnia, Nice said, was how Serbia issued Serb documents to Muslims from Visegrad, who were then transported to third countries as refugees; the joint assault by the Novi Sad Corps and Akran's paramilitary troops on Bratunac. This case shows a repetition of the model of providing assistance to Arkan's troops, which were previously seen in Croatia when the Serbian air force provided him support. In the process of proving the connection between the Serbian leadership with paramilitary units responsible for some of the most heinous crimes, Nice announced, for example, a recording of a conversation of the then Serbian interior minister Radmilo Bogdanovic with Vojislav Seselj discussing an attack on Muslim citizens along the Drina River. Nice said that the prosecution of the Bosnian population as a means for realising an ethnically cleansed Greater Serbia was not sufficient for Milosevic. There was also the intent to destroy a part of the Muslim and Croat population, thus explaining the difference in the gravity of charges agaist Milosevic: crime of genocide in Bosnia and crimes against humanity in Kosovo and Croatia. The trial against Slobodan Milosevic began on Tuesday when the prosecution mostly described the evidence they will be presenting to prove Milosevic's responsibility for crimes in Croatia. Milosevic cannot say he was not warned about the crimes being committed, since the then US State Secretary Lawrence Eagleburger personally warned him about heavy violations of the international law from the start, Nice said. Ethnic cleansing which began in Croatia, like an adopted model repeated in Croatia and Kosovo with the help of Serbia, the prosecutor said. This assistance was not only direct, but, for example, Milosevic ordered the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, to provide assistance to Croatian Serb troops. The prosecutor announced much evidence to back the claim of close cooperation between Milosevic and Karadzic, including documents which show that on behalf of Bosnian Serbs Milosevic made decisions and carried them out. Although Milosevic had tried to cover up his involvement in the moves made by Bosnian Serbs, they could not have achieved what they did without his help, Nice said, citing a number of pieces of evidence to prove Milosevic's role in the crimes in Bosnia. The prosecution will be backing up the evidence with other evidence, for example, intelligence recordings of Milosevic's talks with Karadzic. Milosevic's idea of a life of all Serbs in one state in practice turned into a permanent removal of not wanted residents, Nice said. He announced a witness who would show that Milosevic' when it suit him, in 1995 failed to provide support to the Croatian Serb leadership, and then forced thousands of Serb refugees to go to Kosovo so the ration of the Albanian-Serb population in the province could be more favourable for his plan. (hina) lml