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THE HAGUE, April 10 (AFP) - Judges hearing the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic told prosecutors on Wednesday that they have one year to finish presenting their case against the former Yugoslav president. "In the interest of justice, we must fix a date. The prosecution should have one year from today to conclude the case," presiding judge Richard May said. May insisted Wednesday the prosecution would have a "total of fourteen months" -- including the past two months since the start of the trial on February 12 -- to present their case against Milosevic. "The trial must be put to an end within the reasonable time... The longer the trial lasts, the more difficult it will be to bring a judgment," May insisted. Milosevic is defending himself against more than 60 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the three conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia -- the 1991-95 war in Croatia, the 1992-95 Bosnian war and the conflict in Kosovo. Since the start of the trial, the three judges hearing the case and the prosecution have often clashed over the timing and duration of the trial. The judges, who have not hidden their intention to speed up the procedure, have already limited the number of witnesses testifying for the prosecution in the Kosovo case. At the start of the trial, chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte estimated that the whole process would last about two years, but her deputy, Geoffrey Nice said on Wednesday he was unable to set a date to end the process. Milosevic himself also demanded time to present a suitable defence, insisting that he was unable to conduct cross-examinations during the day while preparing overnight for the next day's hearing. "Physically, it is impossible for me to defend myself," Milosevic has said. He has also complained that he is not treated on equal footing with the prosecution with regard to the preparation of files and other material both sides could use. Earlier Wednesday, Milosevic finished questioning Andras Riedlmayer, a historian heading a team of experts that has conducted a survey of the destruction of Kosovo's cultural heritage. On Thursday, the prosecution was expected to call to the stand a former deputy commander of the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) which was sent to the the province to monitor 1998 ceasefire brokered by US special envoy Richard Holbrooke. The section of the trial dealing with events in Kosovo is expected to last several more months, during which the prosecution plans to call around 100 witnesses. In the first five weeks of the trial, more than a dozen Kosovo Albanians testified about atrocities carried out by Yugoslav forces during the conflict. But Milosevic has maintained that the masses of Albanians fleeing to Macedonia and Albania in that period were trying to get away from fighting between the army and ethnic Albanian KLA rebels and 1999 NATO bombardments, and not from allegedly abusive Serb soldiers. The prosecution claims Milosevic was ultimately behind a plan to carve a Greater Serbia out of Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo through a campaign of ethnic cleansing and violence. But Milosevic has painted himself as a fighter against "terrorism," and pointed to his role as Balkans peacemaker when he signed the US-sponsored Dayton accords which had ended the war in Bosnia in 1995. If convicted, Milosevic faces life imprisonment. --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
