Wife defends Slobodan Milosevic

Mira Markovic, left, says her husband should not be punished

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Slobodan Milosevic's wife has said the deposed Yugoslav president is not to blame for any war crimes committed while he was in office.

In a rare public statement, Mira Markovic said: "If individual soldiers and policemen have committed crimes, you mustn't punish their boss, and certainly not the head of state."

Speaking from Belgrade to Dutch NOS television on Saturday, she also denied Serb forces had committed crimes against majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo -- evidence of which prompted the 1999 NATO bombing campaign against military targets.

She said: "No crimes were committed in Kosovo by Serbs. In Kosovo it was a question of terrorist separatist movements. That was the crime."

Asked about the evidence of mass graves investigators have found in the region, Markovic answered: "You cannot hold the head of state responsible for that."

During the interview she also criticised the way she was treated when visiting her husband in his cell in a U.N. war crimes detention centre in The Hague where he awaits trial for alleged crimes against humanity.

"It was very traumatic. The possibilities for contact were very limited," she said.

Markovic was the teenage sweetheart of the ousted Yugoslav leader, and the couple married in 1965. She is widely regarded as the driving force behind his career.

She recently described Milosevic as "very cute" and said: "He is my hero." They have two children, daughter Mira and son Marko.

Her comments come two days after her husband lashed out at the war crimes charges against him from his cell in The Hague.

The deposed leader was reprimanded by the U.N. tribunal for giving a phone interview to Fox News on Thursday.

Milosevic said in the interview he was proud of what he did for his country and accused the tribunal of fabricating evidence.

He also denied he ever directed his troops to kill civilians, insisting they were under strict orders to "eliminate terrorist groups."

He is scheduled to face the court again on August 30 following a defiant first appearance last month.