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Croat president accuses Milosevic
THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The first head of state to testify at Slobodan Milosevic's war crimes trial has accused the former Serb leader of "doing everything to destroy" Yugoslavia while claiming he wanted to save the nation. Croatian President Stjepan Mesic calmly told the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia in The Hague on Tuesday that Milosevic invoked the threat of war in his plan to "restructure" Yugoslavia. Milosevic, 61, faces 66 counts of war crimes during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, 61 of them for the wars in Croatia and Bosnia for which he is now on trial. "What he (Milosevic) was interested in was a 'greater Serbia' that would be created on the ruins of the former Yugoslavia," Mesic said. "Milosevic said he was fighting for Yugoslavia, but he was doing everything to destroy it," he said. Mesic, the last chairman of the rotating Yugoslav presidency, gave details on the run-up to nearly a decade of warfare that erupted with Croatia's war of independence in 1991. Before Mesic walked into the courtroom, Milosevic blamed the Croat leader for Yugoslavia's downfall. "This witness is problematic in every way because of his criminal role in destroying Yugoslavia," Milosevic said. Mesic, 67, sat a few feet from Milosevic in the witness stand and avoided eye contact with the accused as he answered questions from U.N. prosecutors about Milosevic's prewar policies. Mesic accused Milosevic of intentionally setting off ethnic violence in Croatia in order to create a nation for the Serbs that incorporated large portions of Bosnia. Serbia is the dominant republic in Yugoslavia. "The Serbs in Croatia were needed to ignite the fuse, in order for the war to be transferred to Bosnia and Herzegovina," Mesic said. Mesic said Milosevic -- the Serbian president at the time -- took control of the Yugoslav federal budget, funded by all member states, and used the National Bank to finance Serb forces in Croatia and later Bosnia. Milosevic transformed the Yugoslav army into a force loyal to the Serb cause, Mesic said, prompting Croatia to cut payments to what Mesic said had become "an aggressor against Croatia ... sided with Milosevic." Mesic testified about a meeting in March 1991 where Milosevic and Croatia's late President Franjo Tudjman are said to have secretly discussed dividing Bosnia. Last week Milosevic told the tribunal that mercenaries directed by Bosnia's Muslim leaders and French spies carried out the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in a plot to make the world hate the Serbs. Eyewitness accounts, up to now accepted internationally, say that as many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Serb forces after they overran the U.N. "safe area" in Bosnia. The former Serb leader and later Yugoslav president, in opening arguments at the key Bosnia and Croatia section of his landmark war crimes trial, alleged Serbs were simply the scapegoats and not to blame. "As a pretext for military engagement, genocide carried out by Serbs will be made up... by making it appear a genocide was carried out, an anathema will be placed on the heads of Serbs and measures will be carried out," was how Milosevic summarised the thinking he said lay behind Srebrenica. The prominent witness many are awaiting is former U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke. The key negotiator of the 1995 Bosnia peace accord has said he is willing to testify -- though CNN's Burns says there are arguments as to whether he should testify in public or in closed session. The trial has taken a toll on Milosevic's health and he is in serious risk of a heart attack, according to a court-ordered medical examination. CNN's Burns said the tribunal judges were allowing adjournments to allow Milosevic rest periods.
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