BELGRADE ASKS FOR LILIC'S CLOSED-DOOR TESTIMONY

BELGRADE, July 26 (Hina) - The Yugoslav Foreign Ministry has asked the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague to ensure that information which a former Yugoslav President, Zoran Lilic, may possible give about the conflict in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina during his testimony before the ICTY "be separated, so that (information) cannot be used against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia," the Beta agency quoted a source in the federal administration as saying. #L# The Yugoslav ministry's request is primarily motivated by its fear that Zagreb and Sarajevo could use such information in the processes they instigated before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) insisting on war damages from Yugoslavia. That is why the Yugoslav foreign ministry requests that possible information from Lilic will be of "internal use" and that he testifies behind the closed doors. Lilic, as a witness in the Slobodan Milosevic trial before the ICTY tribunal, has been exempt from the obligation to keep state and military secrets regarding events in Kosovo. However, Belgrade fears that at this stage of the process against Milosevic for war crimes in Kosovo, Lilic may say something which can indirectly refer to the war in Croatia and Bosnia. "Everything is correlated... for instance what this or that unit did in Bosnia, Croatia or in Kosovo. These three segments of (Milosevic's) indictment cannot clearly be separated," the news agency quoted the same source. A representative of the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry, Vladimir Djeric, returned from The Hague in Belgrade on Friday. Yesterday he expounded his ministry's stand before the Hague-based Tribunal. Upon his return Djeric declined to comment on his visit. (hina) ms