Posted on 02/15/2002 3:36:15 AM PST by Arkle
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic says he will call ex-US leader Bill Clinton and other Western politicians to testify at his trial for war crimes at The Hague.
On the second day of his defence case, he has repeated his allegation that Nato is itself guilty of crimes against humanity.
Mr Milosevic, who is conducting his own defence, said he also wanted to question Germany's former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel.
Mr Milosevic is allowed to call whoever he likes as a witness. The court has the power to subpoena them but the judges do have to be persuaded that their testimony will be relevant.
During his arguments on Friday, the ex-Yugoslav leader said former US President Bill Clinton had ordered the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade because he wanted to go down in history as the first Western leader to bomb Chinese territory.
Washington insisted the bombing was a mistake by Central Intelligence Agency target planners using an outdated map.
Mr Milosevic also said his forces had intercepted radio communication between the Nato command centre and the pilots in Kosovo in May 1999.
He said the pilots had spotted a convoy and reported that it was of civilian tractors, but the response was: "Carry out your orders."
Mr Milosevic said: "Dozens of persons were killed."
The thrust of his argument, as on Thursday, was that Nato itself was to blame for the deportation and killing of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in 1999.
Mr Milosevic is accused of orchestrating a systematic campaign of mass murders, deportations and rapes as part of a plan to create an ethnically pure Serb state out of the ruins of former Yugoslavia.
Dressed in a smart navy suit and a tie in the red, blue and white Serbian colours, Mr Milosevic showed photographs of corpses, as he did on Thursday, of those he said had been killed in Nato bombing raids.
The court looked at pictures of a baby covered with blood and dust lying in a field, a young man with only half his face and the unidentifiable remains of many others.
The BBC's John Silverman says Mr Milosevic only appears interested in waging a political atttack on Nato and is completely ignoring the charges on which he is being tried.
The first months of the case will focus on Kosovo; then it will move on to the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. The entire proceedings could last two years.
"The whole world knows this is a political trial," he told the court on Thursday, responding to the prosecution case which was outlined during the first two days of the trial.
Judge Richard May reminded Mr Milosevic he needed to wrap up his defence on Friday, in line with a two-day limit. Mr Milosevic replied that he was only about half way through his statement and did not think his time should be restricted.
Once he has concluded his arguments the UN tribunal prosecutors will start calling up to 350 witnesses to present the full case against him.
Mr Milosevic rejects the legality of the court and has refused to appoint lawyers to defend him in what is being described as the most important war crimes trial since the Nuremberg trials after World War II.
He is the first former head of state to be indicted before an international tribunal.
On Thursday Mr Milosevic showed a German documentary which cast doubt on the 1999 massacre of about 45 ethnic Albanians by Serb forces in the Kosovan village of Racak - an incident that helped trigger Nato intervention.
He argued that alleged mass killings were in fact clashes with terrorists.
But the editor of WDR television was quoted by Sueddeutsche Zeitung as saying that Mr Milosevic has misused the documentary, which did not seek to exonorate the former president.
"Even the film-makers have no doubt that Milosevic is a war criminal," Joerg Schoenenborn told the paper.
During his arguments on Friday, the ex-Yugoslav leader said former US President Bill Clinton had ordered the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade because he wanted to go down in history as the first Western leader to bomb Chinese territory.That's not exactly an unplausible scenario he's describing.
And SusanUSA...I'm in complete agreement with you concerning the legitimizing of this court. This will serve as a strong precident for trying people out of their native country for acts deemed criminal in the eyes of other nations. Heaven help us when they decide our country hasn't done enough to comply with their treaties (i.e. Kyoto, etc). We will be next.
I believe that testifying at a trial is how Hitler initially came to national attention. This could be the platform Clinton is seeking. It would significantly expand his audience from the college students where he is now building his supporters.
Big Texas bump to that!
Especially if he thinks he needs Bubba's testimony to bail him out! :-)
You read my mind. I almost included a comment like that on my ping post also. .
:o)
Long live national sovereignty!
Bravo !! !!
...anything that gives the untied nations a black eye, or a sore backside, is Okay by me....
BTW: Can we get a T-Shirt with that on it ??
BTW: Can we get a T-Shirt with that on it ??
bump that!
You can get a T-shirt with anything on it!
:o)
Oh! Well, that settles it! Oliver Stone will tell us what happened, and why!
If we didn't live in a surreal world that rapidly approaches "one world", then Clinton would be on trial, not a witness! He turned his back on an historic ally in order to kiss the a$$es of the expansionist Muslims. Of course the fact that he could use this "war" to obscure the facts of his own tawdry personal behavior was also an important factor.
The destruction of Orthodox Christian churches by the UCK savages is WORSE than the Taliban destruction of the Buddhist monuments!!!! That is because these churches were USED by a living people! The holy sacraments were celebrated and God's Word was heard in these churches--they were filled with the presence of Christ!!!! So much WORSE for the UCK, the al Qaeda monsters, and their NWO enablers and funders!!!!
______________________________
Milosevic Accuses NATO, Demands Clinton Testify
By Andrew Roche
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) returned to the attack at his war crimes trial on Friday, accusing NATO (news - web sites) of ''bestial'' genocide in Yugoslavia and demanding ex-U.S. President Bill Clinton and other Western leaders come to testify.
``I'm asking what kind of tribunal this is if you refuse to try people for these crimes by the leaders and armies of NATO countries,'' Milosevic said to judges in the Hague.
The former Yugoslav president, in his second day of reply to his prosecutors' opening addresses, blamed the bloodshed of the 1990s entirely on his Balkan enemies and NATO.
On the fourth day of what is forecast to be a marathon case, he insisted the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians who fled Kosovo in 1999 during the NATO air war against Yugoslavia had been driven out not by Serbs, as internationally reported, but by their fellow Albanians.
The guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) ``referred to all Albanians who did not flee Kosovo as traitors,'' he said, creating an ``illusion of exodus.'' ``There were hundreds of cameras waiting at the borders to show alleged Serb misdeeds.''
The motive was to justify NATO's attack. Milosevic showed the court pictures of carbonized bodies of civilians killed by NATO bombs in Kosovo and the rest of Serbia in 1999.
NATO bombs destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, in what Washington insisted was a mistake by Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) target planners using an outdated map.
``It is quite clear that Clinton wanted to go down in history as the first man to bomb Chinese territory by bombing the Chinese embassy,'' Milosevic said. ``This was no accident.''
But even more than the United States, it was Germany which Milosevic singled out for condemnation. He said it destroyed old communist Yugoslavia by its support from Slovenian and Croatian independence, and by secret backing of Albanian ''terrorists.''
``The German intelligence service rallied up criminals from all over Europe. They were pushed to Kosovo,'' he said.
CLUSTER BOMBS
Accusing NATO of the widespread use of especially lethal ''cluster bombs,'' he showed the court a photograph of a Serb peasant woman killed while plowing her field and the corpses of children dressed in their pajamas.
``This is an example of bestiality, targeting people in this way,'' he said, adding that NATO had bombed at night to maximize deaths among sleeping civilians.
He produced pictures of bomb-shattered hospitals, an old people's home, buses, houses and workplaces, some strewn with charred and bloodied bodies.
After NATO occupied Kosovo in June 1999, they allowed Serbs to be killed or forced out by Albanian ``terrorists'' and ''savages.'' More than 100 Serb Orthodox churches were razed in a campaign he likened to Taliban destruction of Buddhist statues.
Echoing the language of his own indictment, Milosevic said the West had committed ``genocide and crimes against humanity.''
``I am going to call witnesses here and I want it to be possible to question Clinton and Albright and Kinkel and Schroeder and Kohl and Dini... Kofi Annan (news - web sites)... Blair,'' he said, listing Western and U.N. leaders involved in Balkan peace talks.
In Moscow, which vehemently opposed the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the Russian parliament on Friday branded the Hague tribunal a ``political'' court which had failed to charge NATO states for atrocities during the air war.
A Duma (lower house) motion expressed ``deep concern over the activities of the International Tribunal,'' saying it had ''ignored serious breaches of international humanitarian law carried out by the member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
``We are deeply concerned that the prosecution of individuals by the tribunal is of a political character,'' the Duma added.
MILOSEVIC TIRED BUT ``IN GOOD SHAPE''
The confident, forcefully-spoken Milosevic, who lampooned his prosecuting lawyers on Thursday from the dock where he sits before a deskful of documents, again goaded them personally.
``The prosecutor is probably bored, I can see him yawning,'' he said of one lawyer, as the court viewed grim photographs of burned and mutilated bodies of children on the monitor screens dotted around the high-tech tribunal chamber.
Milosevic was deported from Belgrade seven months ago to a jail cell in the Hague. He has been indicted for crimes against humanity in Kosovo in 1999 and in Croatia in 1991-2, and for genocide in the 1992-5 Bosnian war.
Earlier this week prosecutors portrayed him as the prime culprit in a decade of Serb aggression which led to massacres, torture, mass rapes and expulsions of populations from their homes across former Yugoslavia.
``He is tired... after so many hours in court but he's in good shape,'' his Belgrade legal adviser, Dragoslav Ognjanovic, said late on Thursday after visiting Milosevic in prison.
After addressing the international court for around four hours on Thursday, the 60-year-old spoke by telephone to his wife and loyal supporter, Mira Markovic, from the U.N. detention center at The Hague (news - web sites), Ognjanovic said.
Dressed in a navy suit and a tie in the red, blue and white Serbian colors, Milosevic sits flanked by seated guards in a courtroom sealed off from the public gallery by a bullet-proof glass wall and equipped with computer screens, cameras and simultaneous interpreters in four languages.
He is conducting his own defense, after refusing to appoint defense counsel or enter a formal plea on the grounds the court has no right to judge him, but is advised by Belgrade lawyers.
Judges have entered not guilty pleas on his behalf and appointed three lawyers as ``friends of the court'' to ensure Milosevic gets a fair trial. The ``friends'' on Friday appealed for him to be given leeway in the length of his address.
Observers said the legal value to his case of his counter-accusations against NATO was doubtful, but they could have a powerful political impact, especially in Yugoslavia.
The reformist Yugoslav government, which handed Milosevic to the Hague, on Friday called his testimony a ``disgusting'' misuse of images of death and destruction to deflect personal blame.
Milosevic could face life in prison if convicted at the end of an epic trial some expect to last at least two years.
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