As trial begins, Milosevic unfazed

His chin jutting defiantly, former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was the picture of insouciance yesterday morning, as he sat in the dock on the first day of the most important war-crimes trial since Nuremberg.

He listened impassively, as chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte introduced charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and a raft of other violations of the rules of war that she described as "almost medieval" in their "savagery and calculated cruelty."

Mr. Milosevic does not recognize the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, branding it a political court dispensing victors' justice. That stance, and his refusal to appoint defense lawyers, presages enormous difficulties for the panel of three judges ruling in a lengthy trial that is seen as a cornerstone of an emerging system of international justice.

They will have to deal with an accused who shows no signs of wanting to defend himself against the specific charges that the indictment levels, that he "planned, insti- gated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted" a string of atrocities against Bosnian, Croatian, and ethnic Albanian Kosovar civilians during the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Instead, Milosevic apparently plans to use the tribunal hearings, expected to last more than a year, as a platform. Going over the judges' heads, he hopes to justify his political role during the conflicts in the court of public opinion.

"This court is illegal, Mr. Milosevic says, but he will be addressing the international public to defend his nation and his policies" says Zdenko Tomanovic, one of the former leader's lawyers. "He wants to argue that the court is reversing the roles of the guilty and the victims."

"Milosevic is history," adds Nenad Stepanovic, a Serbian journalist who has covered the tribunal's hearings. "The Hague is the last stage on which he can appear with all the lights on him."

Most dramatically, Milosevic plans to call on the world leaders he dealt with, such as Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright and Tony Blair, says Mr. Tomanovic, in a bid to highlight how Western leaders cosseted him and negotiated with him before dubbing him the "Butcher of Belgrade" and accusing him of war crimes.

That approach holds the prospect of a twin-level trial, with Milosevic seeking to turn it into a political postmortem of recent Balkan history and ignoring the prosecution's painstaking case, built on eye-witness and other evidence of war crimes spread over nearly 10 years.

That case comprises 65 counts of war crimes outlined in three indictments, including genocide in Bosnia, crimes against humanity in Croatia, and murder and other crimes against humanity in Kosovo, which the prosecution portrays as the outcome of Milosevic's ruthless pursuit of an ethnically pure "Greater Serbia."

The indictments, folded into one case, offer a grim recital of massacres, murders, forced deportations, rapes, torture, and other crimes committed by Serb forces against civilians at a time when Milosevic was allegedly directing them.

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