Milosevic back in the dock

Milosevic still does not know whether he will face one trial or two

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic is to appear before the U.N. war crimes tribunal on Wednesday for a final hearing before the start of his trial in a month's time.

The pre-trial conference is due to be the last of five public appearances before his trial on February, Jim Landale, spokesman for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), told CNN.

Milosevic is due to go on trial on February 12 for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the 1998-1999 Serb crackdown on ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

But evidence of mass graves in Kosovo is unlikely to figure in Wednesday's session as lawyers and judges set the procedural course for the trial.

The judges have asked the prosecution to indicate the number of witnesses they plan to call and discuss possible security measures to protect them.

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The identities of the witnesses are being withheld before they testify. The prosecution has hinted it will call close associates of the former president during the trials. Milosevic, 60, has been in custody at a detention centre near The Hague for six months and has refused to recognise the U.N. court, questioning its legality and refusing to either appoint lawyers to reprepresent him or enter any pleas.

The court has entered not guilty pleas on his behalf to all three indictments and appointed three prominent international lawyers as "friends of the court" to ensure he has a fair trial on charges which now include genocide.

Milosevic is reported to have received visits from two Belgrade lawyers in the past few days and his wife Mira Markovic is due to see him in the near future.

Milosevic, accused of responsibility for a Serb campaign of mass killings and expulsions of ethnic Kosovo Albanians, is to face a separate trial on charges of crimes against humanity and genocide in Croatia in 1991 and in Bosnia in 1992-1995.

This trial is due to immediately follow the first trial regarding Kosovo. But there is still a chance all the charges will be heard at one joint trial.

U.N. war crimes prosecutors have applied for leave to appeal the decision to separate the trials. The next move is for an appeal chamber to decide on this application.

"I would expect this to take place before February 12," said Landale.

The Kosovo indictment -- the first of three against Milosevic -- accuses him of responsibility alongside four other senior Serbs for the murder of 900 Kosovo Albanians and expulsion of around 800,000 civilians from their homes.

U.N. war crimes prosecutors say Kosovo marked the beginning and the end of Milosevic's plan to create a "Greater Serbia" during his 13 years at the helm in Belgrade as both Serb and Yugoslav president.

Milosevic clearly had a role in the conflicts in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, they said. Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) eventually brought NATO's bombing campaign. Human Rights Watch said in a recent report on Kosovo it also had evidence of human rights violations by the KLA and NATO.

The European Court of Human Rights ruled last month that NATO's bombing of Serbian state television in Belgrade, which killed 16 civilians during the Kosovo conflict, did not breach a convention on European human rights. In December Milosevic lodged an appeal with the European Court of Human Rights for immediate release on the grounds his detention violated the convention.