THE HAGUE, Sept 26 (Hina) - Ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has countered charges that he is responsible for war crimes committed in Croatia and Bosnia for the purpose of creating an ethnically pure Serbian state by claiming
that the war in the former Yugoslavia had been the consequence of interests of big powers, for which, he said, Yugoslavia and the Serb people were sacrificed.
THE HAGUE, Sept 26 (Hina) - Ex-Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic has countered charges that he is responsible for war
crimes committed in Croatia and Bosnia for the purpose of creating
an ethnically pure Serbian state by claiming that the war in the
former Yugoslavia had been the consequence of interests of big
powers, for which, he said, Yugoslavia and the Serb people were
sacrificed. #L#
The war was initiated when Yugoslavia got in the way of the
interests of world powers, Milosevic said on Thursday at the start
of the presentation of evidence for war crimes committed in Croatia
and Bosnia-Herzegovina before the UN tribunal at The Hague.
The war was instigated by outside forces who relied on secessionist
forces within Yugoslavia, those who were defeated in World War Two,
Milosevic said, stating that Serbs waged only a defence war.
Before Milosevic's address, the chief prosecutor in the case,
Geoffrey Nice, in his 90-minute introduction reiterated the main
claims of the prosecution regarding Milosevic's responsibility and
the evidence that will be presented.
Nice said Milosevic had not been the sole architect of the ethnic
cleansing plan which intended to annexe cleansed territories to
Serbia, but he had been a key participant in the joint criminal
enterprise without whom its success could not have been conceived.
Milosevic began his introductory statement with a collage of
statements and recordings to back his theory about a conspiracy of
world powers against the Serb people.
The collage compiled by his associates consisted of statements by
US and German officials, interpolated with excerpts from speeches
by Croatia's former and incumbent Presidents Franjo Tudjman and
Stjepan Mesic, images of Adolf Hitler, images of Zagreb welcoming
Nazi officials in 1941, and a video recording of a muster of
Mujahedin units in the Maglaj area in Bosnia in front of former
Bosnian Presidency chairman Alija Izetbegovic.
Included are the late Tudjman's claim that the Independent State of
Croatia (1941-5) had been the expression of the Croatian people's
historical aspirations, excerpts from Tudjman's book "Horrors of
War", Mesic's claim "I have performed my task and Yugoslavia is no
more", the mention of "Tomislav Mercep's death squadrons", and Ivan
Zvonimir Cicak's criticism of US democracy.
Milosevic also played the song "Danke Deutschland", written at the
time of Germany's recognition of Croatia, eliciting laughter in the
courtroom.
Milosevic's material also stated that the originator of the idea to
kill 5,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia, had been former
US President Bill Clinton who, according to the defendant, wanted
to justify a military intervention against Bosnian Serbs.
Milosevic placed the war in Croatia and Bosnia in the context of
global neo-colonialism, German interests in the Balkans, and US
policy which he said eventually opened a European battlefield with
Islamic fundamentalists.
This led to September 11, said Milosevic, who in his three-hour
address outlined a theory about a Vatican-Bonn-Washington interest
axis and what he called a deafening cannonade of a media war against
Serbia.
The international propaganda falsified history and resulted in the
public's conviction that Dubrovnik, southern Croatia, had indeed
been destroyed, that a massacre had taken place at Sarajevo's
Markale market place and that detention facilities had been opened
in Bosnia.
Everyone took part in that campaign, from "Doctors Without
Frontiers" to the "Human Rights Watch", stated Milosevic. The most
prominent Jewish world organisations succumbed to this media war by
siding with Muslims in Bosnia in order to divert the rage of Arabic
countries against them onto Serbs, he said.
Milosevic quoted countless statements by world officials, from
Lord Carrington's about endangered Serbian interests to France's
Mitterand's about Europe being partly responsible for the war.
Milosevic once again accused the UN tribunal at The Hague of being
an illegal institution aimed at manipulating with and revising
history. He said that the indictment against him was the crown and
the tribunal the means of the war in this enterprise.
The start of the presentation of evidence for crimes committed in
Croatia and Bosnia in the Milosevic trial has revived media
interest in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia.
Milosevic wraps up his opening arguments on Friday afternoon, when
the prosecution will call the first witnesses.
(hina) ha sb