THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, June 30 (Hina) - Cross-examining prosecutorial witness Imra Agotic before the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Monday, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic tried to prove that Croatian Serbs were
endangered after the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) had come to power in 1990.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, June 30 (Hina) - Cross-examining prosecutorial
witness Imra Agotic before the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague
on Monday, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic tried to
prove that Croatian Serbs were endangered after the Croatian
Democratic Union (HDZ) had come to power in 1990. #L#
Milosevic asked Croatian President Stjepan Mesic's advisor on
national security if he had known about the armament of HDZ members
in the summer of 1991 and if a party army had been set up in Croatia
that year.
"Those were preparations for defence," Agotic said, adding that the
need for defence imposed itself after the then Yugoslav People's
Army (JNA) had begun to turn into a Serb army and sided with Serbs.
Milosevic asked the witness if he was familiar with the information
about "the disappearance of 600 Serbs from Sisak and a large number
of people from Split, Zagreb, Karlovac and Gospic".
Agotic said he did not have such data, but that he had learned from
the press of cases of murder of Serbs in areas controlled by the
Croatian authorities.
Trying to challenge the argument that only Croatia and Slovenia had
been disarmed before the war, Milosevic claimed that in 1991 the JNA
had decided to seize weapons from the Territorial Defence in all
Yugoslav republics.
"I don't know if weapons were seized in other republics as well, but
I do know that those weapons were given to Serbs in Croatia," Agotic
replied.
Milosevic then asked the witness what he knew about the activities
of Tomislav Mercep and Branimir Glavas in Vukovar and eastern
Slavonia and the mass killings of Vukovar Serbs.
"The defence forces in Vukovar was poorly armed and equipped and so
small that they certainly could not have committed massacres
against the other side," said Agotic.
The former Serbian and Yugoslav president also tried to obtain
confirmation for his claim that Croatian Army units had been
deployed in Bosnia-Herzegovina back in 1992 and that Croatia had
provided weapons and ammunition to Bosnian Croats, to which Agotic
replied that he did not have any knowledge of that.
"I only know that Croatian Army transport helicopters made over 100
flights evacuating the wounded from Bosnia-Herzegovina," Agotic
said.
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