SLJIVANCANIN: I DO NOT FEEL GUILTY

BELGRADE, March 22 (Hina) - A former officer of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and current Yugoslav Army colonel Veselin Sljivancanin has said he does not feel guilty according to the indictment of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) which charges him with war crimes in the area of Vukovar in eastern Croatia in 1991. In an interview with Friday's issue of Belgrade's NIN weekly, Sljivancanin, accused of the death of 290 civilians from the Vukovar hospital, said he did not recognise the Hague tribunal but only the tribunal of his "state and people." According to Sljivancanin, during his service in Vukovar "the SFRY was a legal state," and he as a JNA member was "obliged to protect its sovereignty and disarm bandits." "The decision on whether I did anything wrong should be made by those who gave me the specific task and this country's legal courts," Sljivancanin said. Along with JNA officers Miroslav Radic and Mile Mrksic, the ICTY has indicted Sljivancanin for war crimes committed against civilians in Vukovar. "We are being charged with taking Ustasha terrorist out of the hospital and executing them at Ovcara, three hundred of them. There is not a grain of truth in that," Sljivancanin told the weekly, adding he had heard "that bodies were found at Ovcara" and believed "it is up to legal organs to establish the identity of those bodies." (hina) sb rml