THE HAGUE: Mr Slobodan Milosevic has insisted he was a tireless peacemaker and dismissed the gravest charge against him, genocide, as UN prosecutors opened the Bosnia and Croatia phase of his trial.
Alleging Europe's worst human rights violations since the second World War, prosecutors outlined 61 charges against the ex-Yugoslav president in this stage of the biggest international war crimes trial in Europe since Hitler's henchmen were tried at Nuremberg.
Mr Milosevic argued that Serbs simply defended themselves in the Bosnian and Croatian conflicts and were themselves genocide victims as Western powers engineered the break-up of Yugoslavia.
"I invested all my power in achieving peace. Serbia and myself deserve recognition for working for peace in the area and not being a protagonist of war," said Mr Milosevic (61).
But prosecutors, who say he masterminded a grand plan to create an ethnically pure Greater Serbia, told the court they would present evidence showing Mr Milosevic was "confronted in the strongest terms" with atrocities by Serbs.
"The systematic and organised way in which attacks against non-Serb civilian populations in Croatia were carried out revealed a carefully designed scheme and strategy within an overall plan that may be laid at the door of this accused," said prosecutor Mr Geoffrey Nice.
Prosecutors at the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia closed their case two weeks ago on Kosovo, where Mr Milosevic and former aides are accused of expelling almost one third of the Albanian population from the Serbian province.
Mr Milosevic was Yugoslav leader during the Kosovo conflict, but experts say convicting him for the Bosnian and Croatian conflicts, when he was Serbian leader, will be difficult.
Mr Nice displayed a map illustrating the demographic effects of Serb ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. "A tidy map, bought by thousands of killings, innumerable acts of inhumanity, and countless acts of ethnic cleansing," he called it.
The 43-month siege of Sarajevo, the Srebrenica massacre, killings after the emptying of Croatia's Vukovar hospital - prosecutors catalogued atrocities that shocked the world during Mr Milosevic's 1990-97 strongman reign as Serbian president.
Though Mr Milosevic publicly opposed the siege of Sarajevo, the Bosnian Serb forces responsible were in the pay of a Yugoslav army over which he wielded great influence, they said.
Mr Milosevic was also linked to the notorious 1995 Srebrenica massacre because of the involvement of Serbian interior ministry police there, Mr Nice said.
The Bosnia and Croatia indictments cover 1991-5, predating the Kosovo indictment's 1999 remit. They cover every crime on the Hague tribunal's statute, including genocide in Bosnia.
Mr Milosevic's opening speech repeated now familiar attacks on indictments he called false and a court he condemned as illegal.
The first head of state ever to be indicted for such crimes while in office refused to plead when he was sent to The Hague in 2001 and judges entered not guilty pleas on his behalf. Mr Milosevic insisted Serbia simply helped Serbs in what he termed civil wars in Yugoslavia. He said the Vatican gave Croats money for arms and asked why that was not seen as a crime.
"As Serbs helped Serbia I am a criminal, but the Vatican helped Croats to secede by violent means but the Pope remains the Holy Father," he said to laughter from the public gallery.
Mr Nice warned not to expect smoking guns, or a star witness whose evidence alone would convict Mr Milosevic: "All \ witnesses will provide differing shafts of light . . . but it is unlikely there will be an individual who will be able to tell the whole truth about this man."
Witnesses will include former members of Mr Milosevic's inner circle, such as ex-Yugoslav president Mr Zoran Lilic, military commanders and international figures including the former US ambassador Mr Richard Holbrooke who negotiated the 1995 Bosnia peace accord.
Chief prosecutor Ms Carla del Ponte opened yesterday's proceedings by criticising Yugoslavia's "fractious, difficult and unpredictable" co-operation with the tribunal.
- (Reuters)