WITNESS IN TUTA TRIAL SAYS THERE WAS NO AGREEMENT TO DIVIDE MOSTAR

THE HAGUE, April 3 (Hina) - A witness in the trial of Bosnian Croat Mladen Naletilic aka Tuta at the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal said on Wednesday there was no 1992 Serbian-Croatian agreement on the division of Mostar and the removal of the southern Bosnian town's Muslim population. #L# At that time the Croat Defence Council (HVO) and the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ABiH) joined efforts to liberate the wider Mostar area and members of both the HVO and ABiH were killed in those operations, said Gen. Slobodan Praljak, a former HVO commander. He added those casualties showed the absurdity of claims that Serbs and Croats had agreed to each take one side of Mostar across the Neretva river. In 1992 Serb troops demolished six bridges across the Neretva and torched Mostar, he said, adding there was archival evidence proving this. As for the Old Bridge, Praljak said he "personally issued an order to make a thick wood board construction around the bridge so that mortars wouldn't demolish it. Two HVO members were killed in the process." Media on the territory of the former Yugoslav federation claim Praljak was responsible for the destruction of Mostar's medieval bridge. Describing the war events in 1992 Bosnia and the effect Serbian conquering had on the composition of the population, Praljak said refugee movements disrupted the delicate Muslim-Croat ethnic balance, while the great suffering of the Muslims paved the way for the islamisation of their army. Praljak said that as early as 1992 the ABiH was divided as to cooperation with the HVO. Despite the prosecution's protest that the witness was making strong statements about the ABiH, trial chamber president Liu Daqun allowed Praljak to continue, with the explanation that the chamber was interested in the Croat-Muslim conflicts. The prosecution maintains that the HVO, as an organised army, attacked the Muslim population, and that there was no question of a HVO-ABiH conflict. Praljak described how during 1992 and early 1993 he personally saw foreign fighters, the so-called Mojahedin, arrive in Bosnia in great numbers with international humanitarian convoys. "From intelligence sources we knew where the Mojahedin were, where they were trained, what kind of unit they were forming and what kind of war they wanted to wage," said Praljak. As the first public witness for the defence, the general began his testimony yesterday. Naletilic is charged, together with Vinko Martinovic aka Stela, with crimes committed against Muslim civilians and prisoners in the Mostar area in 1993, when Naletilic commanded the Convicts Battalion. Praljak said the war in Bosnia was a war of peoples fighting for territory, and that the Serbs planned to annexe conquered territories to Serbia. (hina) ha sb