September 28, 2002 Full Story: http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/28/international/europe/28HAGU.html?tntem ail1 Milosevic Says Srebrenica Was a Plot to Frame the Serbs By MARLISE SIMONS HE HAGUE, Sept. 27 - Slobodan Milosevic presented in court today a new version of his long-held theory that the destruction of Yugoslavia was a Western conspiracy. It was a novel explanation of the unfolding of the massacre at Srebrenica, the worst bloodbath in Europe since World War II. As many as 7,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys were killed in the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995. All the evidence points to the Bosnian Serb army, the Serbian police and their paramilitary helpers as the perpetrators. But Mr. Milosevic, the leader of Serbia at the time, said the people really responsible for the mass killings were French intelligence operatives, Muslim officials from Bosnia and mercenaries. The "insane" Srebrenica massacre, he said, was a plot to frame the Serbs by making it seem as if they had committed genocide. This belief would inspire the world to loathe the Serbs and would give the West a pretext for military intervention, Mr. Milosevic said. "Ask Jacques Chirac about Srebrenica," he said, referring to the French president. Western officials who have dealt with Mr. Milosevic have often said that the Serbian leader was capable of generating extraordinary conspiracy theories. A number of them have rung through the sober courtroom in The Hague. But Mr. Milosevic's theory on the Srebrenica massacre is not likely to be of much assistance to him. Prosecutors are likely to have little difficulty refuting the theory because the tribunal has already made an exhaustive study of the massacre, which occurred after Bosnian Serb troops and the Serbian police overran the enclave, then under the protection of a few hundred United Nations peacekeepers. The evidence against the Serbs includes exhaustive documentation, telephone intercepts, eyewitness accounts, military records, mass graves and forensic studies. Last year, the tribunal convicted Radislav Krstic, a Bosnian Serb general, of genocide for his role at Srebrenica and sent him to prison for 46 years. The massacre now forms part of the case against Mr. Milosevic and features prominently among the array of war crimes charges against him, including genocide. Mr. Milosevic presented his Srebrenica arguments this morning while speaking at the opening of the second phase of his trial, which deals with the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. Since it began in February, the trial has dealt only with charges arising from the Kosovo crisis of 1998 to 1999. Because Mr. Milosevic acts as his own lawyer, he was given three hours to respond to the prosecution. As is often the case, he took about twice as long as the prosecutors. As usual, Mr. Milosevic did not defend himself in a legal sense but launched a political counteroffensive. Prosecutors on Thursday charged that Mr. Milosevic was responsible for enormous bloodshed with his plan to drive non-Serbs from Serb-inhabited areas in Bosnia and Croatia and eventually create an enlarged state for Serbs only. Mr. Milosevic responded with video tapes and descriptions of Serbs being persecuted in Bosnia and Croatia, blaming the "fascist Croats" and "fundamentalist Muslims" for killing Serbs. Moreover, he said, the United States, Germany, the Vatican and others had caused the fighting because they had wanted to break up Yugoslavia. At important moments in the trial, such as this week, Mr. Milosevic appears to speak beyond the courtroom to his imagined audience at home, which can follow the proceedings via television. "The policy of Serbia was directed toward peace and to support Serbs in their hardship," he said. About the massacre at Srebrenica, which Serbs now know about, he said: "I want the truth to be revealed for this insane crime." Mr. Milosevic' version of the truth, as he described it in court, was that the massacre plot was hatched just days before the event at a meeting with two Muslim government officials from Sarajevo, Gen. Bernard Janvier of France, the United Nations force commander at the time, and a mercenary who headed a paramilitary gang and who worked for French intelligence. Mr. Milosevic suggested they made a deal to surrender Srebrenica to the Serbs and paid the local Muslim military leader who withdrew his men. It was the paramilitaries who carried out the slaughter in order to cast the Serbs in a bad light, Mr. Milosevic said. Mr. Milosevic added that the same paramilitary unit later traveled to Zaire, to protect the president there. Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
