Milosevic: Army insider testifies

Milosevic castigated his ex-army accuser as "a deserter"

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands -- Prosecutors have produced their first so-called "insider" witness against Slobodan Milosevic at the U.N. war crimes tribunal.

Former Yugoslav army officer Nike Peraj, an ethnic Albanian who deserted from the army in June 1999, told how Belgrade "declared war" on its renegade province of Kosovo.

Peraj, 55, described the relationships between Serbian police, paramilitary units and the Yugoslav army.

"I will never forget the crimes and terrible things that I have seen... committed by forces of the Yugoslav army, the MUP (internal police), paramilitaries and others," he told the tribunal on Thursday.

Former Yugoslav leader Milosevic is accused of war crimes in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s. Prosecutors charge him with "command responsibility" -- that he knew or should have known of the crimes but did nothing to stop or punish them.

The "insider" testimony came on the day that a Belgrade court issued arrest warrants for 17 top Serb war crimes suspects who failed to surrender voluntarily, including the two most-wanted fugitives -- former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his wartime commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic.

EXTRA INFORMATION In-Depth: Milosevic on trial

However, the warrants were not expected to lead to the suspects' immediate arrests and extradition to the U.N. tribunal.

Branislav Todic, the chief investigative judge of Belgrade's district court, told The Associated Press that authorities do not know the whereabouts of Mladic, Karadzic and several other war crimes suspects.

However the U.N. said on Thursday Bosnian Serb authorities had arrested five ex-policemen for war crimes in what is believed to be the first such move in a region renowned for harbouring war crimes suspects.

The ex-police officers from the northwestern town of Prijedor were detained on Wednesday and transferred to a prison in the Bosnian Serb de facto capital Banja Luka, where the prosecutor charged them with war crimes, the U.N. told Reuters.

At the U.N. tribunal on Thursday Milosevic, who has appointed no lawyer and is defending himself, contended that military rules allowed the army to be used in peacetime to combat terrorism.

"An army unit, yes, but not the whole army," Peraj told Milosevic in cross-examination. "In Kosovo all the army units that existed in Yugoslavia were used. Only the navy was not used."

The bespectacled witness -- whom Milosevic disparaged as "an officer, albeit a deserter" -- said he met ethnic Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army three times after the Kosovo conflict.

Milosevic suggested that KLA threats or blackmail had persuaded Peraj to testify in The Hague -- something vehemently rejected by the witness, who said he had come to do his "moral duty."

"I have come here because of the lamenting, the tears of the families, the brothers, sisters, mothers who have been left without loved ones," he declared.

"Many of them have come to me and have asked me if I don't know something about the fate of their loved ones because I was in the army."