BRUSSELS - Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Yugoslavia, derided as a "supreme absurdity" charges that he orchestrated genocide in Bosnia. He said he should be regarded as a peace-maker.
In a defiant performance yesterday before the United Nations international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Mr Milosevic, who has declinedto appoint lawyers, refused to enter a plea to the charges related to the war in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. "I would like to say to you that what we have just heard, this tragic text, is a supreme absurdity. I should be given credit for peace in Bosnia not war," Mr Milosevic said after the indictment.
He said the "responsibility for the war in Bosnia is with the forces who broke up Yugoslavia and their agents in Yugoslavia – not the Serbs or the Serbs in Bosnia". The proceedings against Mr Milosevic are the biggest war crimes trial since the Second World War .
The 60-year-old former president, who was handed over to the tribunal last June, seemed to have lost none of his composure during his fourth court appearance.
It took well over an hour for the list of accusations of genocide, murder and torture – including infamous episodes such as the massacre at Srebrenica – to be read. For the most part Mr Milosevic remained impassive as the prosecution listed details of ethnic cleansing, but on several occasions he pointedly examined his watch.
While he again refused to co-operate with proceedings, the exchange of words was shorter than on his previous appearances when confrontations with Judge Richard May have sometimes ended with his microphone being switched off. In the absence of a formal response to the Bosnia charges, Judge May entered a "not guilty" plea.
Mr Milosevic faces 29 counts of genocide, complicity in genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes against Bosnian Muslims and Croats.If convicted, he faces life in prison.
