SERBIA: The former commander of United Nations forces in the Bosnian war told Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial yesterday that the region was steeped in "pure hatred" by the time he arrived in the country, making it difficult to decide who was responsible for atrocities.
Retired French general Philippe Morillon, commander of UN forces in 1992-93, said Bosnia was trapped in a "hellish circle of revenge" when he arrived to take command.
"There were a certain number of Rambos who were completely crazy," he said. "Everyone was telling me 'we are not attacking'. It was always people saying 'we are defending ourselves'."
But he singled out Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic for blame for putting out lies about the fate of Serbian women in the country's capital, Sarajevo, held by mostly Muslim forces. "When he said all Serb women in Sarajevo were in whore houses, that was a way of exaggerating the fear," said Gen Morillon.
He was giving evidence in the final days of the prosecution case against Milosevic which is due to end on February 19th, just over two years after it began.
In this time, more than 200 witnesses have come to the court in The Hague to give evidence against Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president, who is charged with genocide and other crimes for his part in the wars in Bosnia, Kosovo and Croatia.
Gen Morillon became famous for forcing the Serbs to give him access to the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in 1993, arriving to promise the population that the UN would protect them. Three years later - long after he had left Bosnia - the enclave fell and 7,000 Muslim men were executed.
Gen Morillon said yesterday he was aware of the hatred in the Srebrenica area, which he said came out of tit-for-tat violence between Muslims and Serbs.
Milosevic, who is defending himself, will have a three-month break in the trial to prepare his defence. Because he will be granted equal time to the prosecution, his trial is not expected to end before 2006.