Milosevic accused of court 'lies'

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Slobodan Milosevic was accused of telling lies by his old adversary Ibrahim Rugova during the former Yugoslav president's war crimes trial.

The two hotly disputed the origins of ethnic Albanian resistance in Kosovo during the late 1990s as well as the motive behind Rugova's house arrest in April 1999 during stern questioning of the prosecution key witness by Milosevic on Monday.

The former Yugoslav leader, who is carrying out his own defence, queried the evidence given by the Kosovo president Rugova on Friday.

At one point Rugova, who last saw Milosevic during a stage-managed meeting in 1999, accused Milosevic of telling lies about his house arrest.

"I don't want to use any insults here but I would say that this is only a lie," Rugova told the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

Milosevic faces charges of crimes against humanity as well as genocide in Bosnia and Croatia.

EXTRA INFORMATION In-Depth: Milosevic on trial

He is also accused of having had a role in the murder of 900 Kosovo Albanians and the expulsion of 800,000 of them in a violent Serb crackdown in 1999. The killings and exodus sparked NATO air strikes against targets in Yugoslavia.

Milosevic has refused to enter a plea, but court officials have submitted a plea of not guilty on his behalf.

The two men came to verbal blows after Milosevic had said the former academic had asked for the protection of Serb forces at his Pristina home against assassination by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

"Mr. Rugova, you came to me asking me to save you and your family from assassination perpetrated by the KLA," Milosevic said.

"Look me in the eyes and tell me whether that is true or not."

Rugova said Milosevic's forces had kept him under house arrest in Pristina, the Kosovo capital, and that he had feared the Serb government would murder him.

"I was under house arrest. I didn't need any protection," Rugova was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.

The KLA had taken up arms after becoming frustrated by Rugova's policy of passive resistance. Milosevic regarded the KLA as a Western-sponsored "terrorist" organisation and the action carried out in Kosovo was an attempt to flush them out.

Rugova, who went into temporary exile in Rome in May 1999, returned to Kosovo in July 1999 after the Serb withdrawal and was elected president in March this year.

The two also disputed the cause of the Kosovo war -- whether it was an attempt to create a Greater Albania, or a struggle for freedom by the ethnic Albanian minority.

Milosevic produced a map drawn "years ago," which he said proved the intention to unite Kosovo with neighbouring Albania to create a Greater Albania.

"This is a map of Greater Albanian drawn up by Albanian nationalists," Milosevic was quoted by The Associated Press as saying.

"As you can see, it includes the southeast of Montenegro, southern Serbia, western Macedonia and parts of northern Greece" in addition to Albania and Kosovo.

Rugova dismissed it as "one of many alleged maps," and said "there have also been Serbs who wanted to create a Greater Serbia."

Milosevic is accused of five counts of war crimes related to Kosovo, which are among the 66 counts he faces including alleged atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia during the decade of Yugoslavia's break-up.

Kosovo is now an international protectorate, with a self-rule for the ethnic Albanians under the newly elected Rugova.