Milosevic wants Blair, Clinton as trial witnesses

Slobodan Milosevic wants British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US President Bill Clinton to be called as witnesses at his war crimes trial, a legal adviser of the former Serbian leader said yesterday.

Lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic said Mr Milosevic, due to launch his defence in June, had submitted a list with 1,631 names of people he wants to appear as witnesses in the United Nations court in The Hague. The judge decides which witnesses can appear.

Mr Blair and Mr Clinton were key Western leaders behind Nato's 11-week bombing campaign to halt Serbian repression of Kosovo's Albanians in 1999. Mr Clinton was in power when the United States brokered the peace deal that ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Mr Milosevic is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo in the 1990s. The trial is Europe's biggest war crimes proceedings since Hitler's henchmen were tried at Nuremberg after World War Two.

"The list includes a group of witnesses Slobodan Milosevic marked as hostile witnesses," Dr Tomanovic told Reuters by phone from The Netherlands.

"Milosevic is asking the court to call Clinton, Blair, Albright, Cook...," he said, referring also to former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.

The list also groups senior officials in old Yugoslavia, he said.

The trial, dogged by Mr Milosevic's bouts of illness, opened in February 2002. It was adjourned in February when prosecutors rested their case after calling some 290 witnesses in two years.

Mr Milosevic, ousted by Serb reformers as Yugoslav president in 2000 and sent the following year to The Hague, is defending himself and has vigorously cross-examined witnesses.

He has dismissed the charges against him as politically motivated lies and says he does not recognise the court's jurisdiction.

Lawyers appointed to help ensure Mr Milosevic gets a fair trial last month filed a motion calling for the counts of genocide and complicity in genocide be dropped.

Chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla del Ponte has said that despite the lack of a "smoking gun" she had enough evidence to convict Mr Milosevic of genocide.