SERBIA: JOURNALISTS DISAGREE AS TO TESTIFYING AT HAGUE TRIBUNAL

BELGRADE, Oct 12 (Hina) - The Serbian Journalists' Association has called on journalists not to testify voluntarily before courts, including the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal, "so as not to turn their professional mission into a judicial-investigative one," the Fonet news agency said on Saturday. #L# The Association objects to the testimony of Dejan Anastasijevic, a journalist with the Belgrade weekly "Vreme", at the part of the trial against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic referring to crimes committed in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In a statement issued on Saturday, the Association, which was close to the regime in the past decade, says that journalists "should not transform into some sort of professional witnesses-insiders as they might lose credibility with the interlocutor and bring into question the possibility of conducting any investigative journalism." The president of the Independent Association of Serbian Journalists, Milica Lucic-Cavic, told Fonet today that if journalists wanted to, they should testify "as they were eye- witnesses, they saw what was being done in the field, and can contribute to the finding of the right answers to questions being posed in connection with the accused and with the crimes that took place in this region." (hina) ha sb