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Milosevic grills Croat president
THE HAGUE, The Netherlands -- The trial of Slobodan Milosevic has witnessed a heated exchange between the former Yugoslav President and the Croatian President Stjepan Mesic. Milosevic, who is defending himself at the U.N. war crimes trial in The Hague against charges of genocide, levelled accusations of murder and betrayal of Yugoslavia during his cross-examination of Mesic on Wednesday. He said Mesic, who was the last president of a united Yugoslavia in 1991, had Serb villages torched in the Balkan conflicts of the early 1990s. Giving evidence on Tuesday, Mesic had portrayed Milosevic as a warmonger bent on breaking up Yugoslavia and seizing Croat land. Mesic said he had been powerless to stop Milosevic -- then president of Serbia -- as Milosevic took control of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army in 1991. He said Milosevic then methodically set about purging non-Serbs from Serb-dominated areas within Bosnia and Croatia in 1991-1995. "The army did what Milosevic's regime asked of it, which was to create a 'Greater Serbia'," Mesic repeated on Wednesday. But under cross-examination, Milosevic said: "I see you have a real hang-up about (me). You mentioned me in every other sentence yesterday. "According to your instructions Serb villages (in Croatia) were destroyed.
"I heard about the torching of villages and lodged a complaint with (late Croatian) President (Franjo) Tudjman." Mesic, who was the last to hold the rotating presidency of the old Yugoslav federation before its collapse in 1991 and who later went on to lead Croatia, denied the accusation. Mesic also dismissed allegations that Serbs lived in an atmosphere of fear as an "exaggeration," saying: "Those who wanted to cut off parts of Croatia are those who are to be blamed for radical statements." Milosevic added: "You betrayed Yugoslavia, you contributed to its dissolution." Mesic avoided looking at Milosevic and calmly told judges he served a year in prison in 1975 for comments he made demanding more democracy for Croatia under Yugoslavia's former communist rule. However, he denied knowledge of the murders Milosevic alleged. "That is a product of someone's fantasy," Mesic said. "I had as much influence (on the men's murder) as I had on Lincoln's assassination." Milosevic, 61, faces 66 counts of war crimes allegedly committed on his authority during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
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