THE NETHERLANDS: A central figure in the early stages of the Serbian wars against the rest of Yugoslavia killed himself on Sunday while detained at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Milan Babic (50) was the leader of the Serbian insurgency in Croatia which turned into an eight-month war in 1991. Then a 35-year-old dentist from the south-western Croatian town of Knin, the seat of the Serbian insurrection, Babic was used by former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, then the Serbian leader in Belgrade, to foment an uprising enabling the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army to attack Croatia and later Bosnia.
The suicide is an acute embarrassment for the war crimes tribunal's detention unit at Scheveningen, outside The Hague. Tribunal president Judge Fausto Pocar promptly ordered an inquiry into how the suicide, the second of an inmate in The Hague, could occur.
The death fed concerns that more prominent figures could also end their lives rather than face the disgrace of going into the dock. Mr Milosevic, who is facing charges of genocide in a trial in The Hague now in its fifth year, has a family history of suicide.
Babic had been serving his sentence in another country, but was being held in The Hague while testifying in the trial of his former sidekick and Croatian Serb police chief, Milan Martic.
Both men were local leaders of the Serbian campaign in Croatia in 1991. After the Serbs seized a quarter of Croatia and launched "ethnic cleansing" pogroms that would be conducted on a much bigger scale in Bosnia, Mr Milosevic sued for peace in Croatia. The UN sent in 14,000 peacekeepers under a plan devised by the late UN envoy and US secretary of state, Cyrus Vance.
Babic, a virulent Serbian nationalist who later showed remorse for his actions and pleaded guilty to his crimes, defied Mr Milosevic on the peace plan. He was taken to Belgrade and ordered to sign up.
The Serbian regime said three days of meetings resulted in unanimous support for peace and the Vance plan. Babic said he was tortured and kept awake for 40 hours until he signed.
The Vance plan held until the summer of 1995 when Croatian forces reconquered all of Serb-held Croatia, resulting in the expulsion of around 200,000 Serbs, including Babic.