PROSECUTOR: P. ASHDOWN WILL TESTIFY IN MILOSEVIC TRIAL NEXT WEEK

THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, March 4 (Hina) - The new international High Representative for Bosnia, Paddy Ashdown, will testify in the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic at the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague next week, prosecutor Geoffrey Nice said at the beginning of Monday's main hearing. Ashdown will testify about events in Kosovo, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Nice said at the beginning of the fourth week of the trial in which the prosecution is interrogating witnesses to prove the suffering of Kosovo Albanians in 1999. Lord Ashdown visited the area of the ex-Yugoslavia several times since the conflicts started in 1991. Four years ago, during the trial of Bosnian Croat general Tihomir Blaskic, he told the Hague tribunal former Croatian President Franjo Tudjman had drawn on a London restaurant menu in 1995 what the area of the former Yugoslav federation should look like in ten years. Ashdown showed the judges the back cover of a menu on which he had drawn the coastline and the major towns and asked Tudjman to finish it. He said Tudjman had drawn a capital S across Bosnia to indicate the border between the Croatian and Serbian territories. Ashdown asserted his impression was that Tudjman was not referring to Bosnia's Croat-Muslim federation but a "Greater Croatia". The Milosevic trial today resumed with the testimony of Albanian lawyer Hasan Pruthi of Djakovica. He described how Kosovo Albanians were systematically prevented from opening companies, and said the systematic persecution and suffering of Djakovica's Albanian residents began in 1999. Milosevic is charged with genocide in Bosnia and crimes against humanity in Croatia and Kosovo. (hina) ha