Milosevic Pours Scorn on Bosnia Genocide Charge

24/05/2001| IslamWeb

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic on Tuesday contemptuously dismissed charges of spearheading a Serb campaign of genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnian war as ``monstrous,'' refusing to plead to the third and gravest indictment against him.
The former Yugoslav leader, looking tired and pale during his fourth appearance at the United Nations war crimes court, said the charges were a ``supreme absurdity'' full of lies about the longest of three major conflicts during his 13 year rule.
Milosevic, who lost his grip on power after he was defeated by Serbian reformists in elections last year, could face life in prison if convicted of orchestrating ``ethnic cleansing'' in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990s.
``I would like to say to you that what we have just heard, this tragic text, is a supreme absurdity,'' said Milosevic, who served as both Serbian and Yugoslav president after Yugoslav communism yielded to nationalism at the end of the Cold War.
Serb atrocities in Bosnia -- from the shelling of bread queues in Sarajevo to the Srebrenica massacre -- horrified the world, sparking U.N. sanctions against Serbia and Western shuttle diplomacy culminating in the 1995 Dayton peace accord.
``I should be given credit for peace in Bosnia not war,'' said Milosevic, who signed the peace accord in the United States with Croatian leader Franjo Tudjman and Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic in late 1995 to end the conflict.
Dressed in a blue suit and tie, Milosevic refused to enter a plea to 29 counts of genocide, complicity to commit genocide, crimes against humanity and other war crimes in Bosnia when prompted to do so by the tribunal's presiding judge Richard May.
``Mr. Milosevic at this time you are simply required to enter a plea of guilty or not guilty. You have failed to do so. Accordingly the trial chamber will enter pleas of not guilty to all the counts of this indictment,'' judge May said.