BRUSSELS/THE HAGUE, 2 October — The first head of state to testify against Slobodan Milosevic at the UN war crimes tribunal yesterday portrayed him as a cold and ruthless warmonger, determined to create breakup Yugoslavia and create an ethnically-pure Greater Serbia. In powerful testimony to the UN war court in The Hague, Croatian President Stipe Mesic, accused Milosevic of engineering the disintegration of the country, and of using the army to seize Croat land in pursuit of his expansionist aims.
Mesic and Milosevic faced each other across the courtroom and traded accusations of blame over the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. Mesic is the first head of state to testify against Milosevic, who is in the dock on more than 60 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his involvement in the 1990s wars in Kosovo, Croatia and Bosnia.
The unprecedented public appearance of the two men attracted a throng of curious onlookers to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, where Milosevic has been on trial since February.
And even before his old adversary Mesic had entered the court, Milosevic addressed the judges and announced: "There is a problem with the next witness due to his personal criminal role in the breakdown of Yugoslavia." But his protest was dismissed by presiding Judge Richard May.
For his part, Mesic, the last Croatian to have been president of the Yugoslav Federal Republic in 1991, portrayed Milosevic as a warmonger lacking in emotion. "He was always working for the war option," Mesic told the court. "I never saw any sign of feeling on him. All he had was goals he had to implement." He also accused Milosevic of trying to further his dream of a Greater Serbia by planning to annex Serb-occupied lands in Croatia and Bosnia and using the Yugoslav Army to that end.
Mesic alleged that Milosevic wanted a Greater Serbia which was "ethnically pure" and "cleansed of its non-Serbian population". The war between Zagreb and Belgrade-backed Serb rebels, who opposed Croatia’s bid for independence from the former Yugoslavia, claimed some 20,000 lives.
During the war a third of Croatian territory was occupied by Serb rebels. In a letter to then UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar in 1991, Mesic accused the army, entirely loyal to Milosevic, of preventing him from traveling from Zagreb to Belgrade to attend meetings of the presidency, by blockading roads and airports with tanks.
The army was now entirely Serbian and acting autonomously, he said. "The Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic has torn down the Yugoslav federation," he claimed. And he warned: "The flames of war that have been started in the last Bolshevik bastion which is Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia must not spread to the rest of Europe." Mesic told the court he believed that as Milosevic was in control of the army, he had effectively carried off a "military putsch" as the armed forces were protecting only Serbian ends and ignoring all requests by the president to return to barracks.
He also said the army was financed by funds Milosevic had diverted from the federal coffers, notably tourist revenue contributed by Croatia. Milosevic sat attentively throughout the session, his arms folded or with one hand in a pocket and the occasional sardonic grin lighting up his face, while Mesic, who has already given evidence in previous cases, appeared entirely unintimidated by coming face-to-face with his former rival. (The Independent)
