Milosevic Rejects Lawyers Appointed by U.N. Court BELGRADE (Reuters) - Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic has rejected lawyers appointed for him by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague his Belgrade attorneys said on Friday. The tribunal said on Thursday it was appointing three lawyers as ``amici curiae'' -- ``friends of the court'' meant to ensure the defendant gets a fair trial. Milosevic, accused of crimes against humanity for atrocities committed in Kosovo and set to face a genocide charge for crimes from the Bosnian war, has refused to recognize the court and his attorneys said the same stance applied to the new lawyers. The former president told his legal advisers at home by phone that he would refuse any contact with his ''newly-appointed pseudo-defenders,'' the Belgrade lawyers said in a statement. Milosevic, a law graduate, has branded the tribunal an illegal, political court and said he will defend himself. The statement said the appointed counsel were assuming an enormous responsibility as ``accomplices in a staged trial based on sheer force and not on the law, a process of retaliation against the leader of a people who stood up against NATO. Branislav Tapuskovic, the head of the Serbian Lawyers' Association appointed as one of the three ``friends of the court,'' said he had expected Milosevic's reaction but he and his colleagues would still try to contact the former leader. ``When I was asked to accept this position I reckoned with the possibility of such a reaction. It is in line with his not recognizing the court,'' Tapuskovic told Reuters. ``There is no reason not to try to contact Mr. Milosevic, but if he refuses this contact we can only respect his decision,'' Tapuskovic said. Briton Steven Kay and Dutch advocate Mischa Wladimiroff are the other two lawyers named by the court. Tapuskovic said he planned to meet with Wladimiroff on Sunday in Belgrade to discuss how they could best fulfil their duty. Wladimiroff represented Bosnian Serb police reserivst Dusko Tadic, the first person to be sentenced by the Hague tribunal in a full-length trial. Tadic was jailed in 1997 for 20 years for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Kay acted for Alfred Musema, a former Rwandan tea factory boss convicted in 2000 of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda -- sister institution to the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague. _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
