THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Sept 16 (Hina) - The prosecution in the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on Tuesday screened several features on the shelling of Sarajevo which witness Aernhout can Lynden made for the
British TV network Sky News in 1992.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Sept 16 (Hina) - The prosecution in the war crimes
trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on Tuesday
screened several features on the shelling of Sarajevo which witness
Aernhout can Lynden made for the British TV network Sky News in
1992. #L#
Footage from June 1992 shows artillery fire from Serb positions
around Sarajevo on the centre of the Bosnian capital. Also shown was
a feature on the wounded and victims at the Kosevo hospital.
Dutchman van Lynden told the Hague tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia today that no shots were fired from Sarajevo on Serb
positions around the city.
Among the features shown in court was an interview the witness did
with the commander of the Bosnian Serb army, General Ratko Mladic,
at an artillery position above Sarajevo in September 1992.
Mladic says in the interview that Serbs have to fight while they
exist, and that he is not concerned with accusations of war crimes
because he did not take part in them but only defended his people.
The witness confirmed today that at that time, fire was opened on
Sarajevo from a position east of the city, where he interviewed
Mladic.
Van Lynden said he spoke several times with then Bosnian Serb
President, Radovan Karadzic, who told him in September 1992 that
the entire Sarajevo belonged to the Serbs and that they could no
longer live with Muslims and Croats.
Three years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Karadzic said a wall
should be erected through Sarajevo, the witness said, adding that
Karadzic also told him he was meeting with Milosevic, then
president of Serbia. Van Lynden said he heard from several other
sources that Mladic was also meeting with Milosevic.
The witness said he interviewed the defendant in July 1991, during
the war in Croatia.
Van Lynden said that when the cameras were turned off, Milosevic
told him he had to understand that the Serbs were the victims of a
conspiracy by the Vatican, the Fourth German Reich and Muslim
fundamentalists, with then German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich
Genscher at the helm.
In that informal chat with Milosevic, van Lynden said he got the
impression that Milosevic's intention was for the war to spill over
into Bosnia and Kosovo once it ended in Croatia to the Serbs'
liking.
Van Lynden went on to say that when he asked Milosevic why he
demanded for Serbs in Croatia rights he denied Albanians in Kosovo,
Milosevic angrily responded that Kosovo was Serbian, would stay so,
and that those were two completely different things.
(hina) ha