Milosevic Feels 'Excellent,' Lawyer Says BELGRADE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) is feeling ''excellent,'' his Belgrade lawyer said on Saturday after returning from The Hague (news - web sites) where the former Yugoslav president is in jail awaiting trial on charges of crimes against humanity. Zdenko Tomanovic said he met Milosevic as his legal adviser but would not be acting as his defense lawyer in the U.N. war crimes court Milosevic brands an ``illegal'' instrument of his NATO (news - web sites) enemies. ``He feels excellent, very well. His condition is very good from whatever aspect you look at it,'' Tomanovic told Reuters at the airport after spending last week in The Hague. During his brief, defiant appearance before the court on Tuesday, the ousted Yugoslav strongman refused to enter a plea on war crimes charges which center on deportations and killings of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1999 and declined defense counsel. The British judge chairing the three-man bench entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf. Prosecutors say that Milosevic's stonewalling tactics will not prevent the case going to trial, probably next year. Tomanovic said a string of lawyers had submitted, or planned to submit, requests to the tribunal to consult with Milosevic as legal advisors, which he believed the court would allow. ``Yesterday a French attorney was in The Hague, at the moment there are two Canadian lawyers...on Monday three large Greek law firms should come, on Tuesday I think three large German firms, on Wednesday the firm of Mr. Ramsey Clark,'' Tomanovic said. POLITICAL PRISONER? Canadian lawyer Christopher Black, who heads the legal arm of the newly formed International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, said on Thursday he was planning to see the former strongman. The committee groups 200 lawyers, writers and intellectuals and describes Milosevic as a political prisoner. Asked if Milosevic still planned to defend himself alone before the war crimes tribunal, Tomanovic said: ``He will not defend himself, he will attack, but of course alone without any lawyer and without anyone's help.'' Tomanovic said the Belgrade public prosecutor and investigative judge had asked the tribunal to allow them to talk to Milosevic in connection with extending a corruption case under way against him in Yugoslavia. Yugoslav reformers who ousted Milosevic in October jailed him on April 1 on charges of abuse of power and corruption but bowed to international pressure to cooperate with the U.N. court and handed him over to the tribunal last week. Belgrade media have reported that the Serbian authorities plan to pursue the local case against Milosevic through Belgrade courts but there has been no official confirmation. Milosevic's wife Mira Markovic has applied for a visa to visit him in jail, the Dutch authorities reported on Friday. On Saturday, no one at the Dutch embassy in Belgrade was available to say if the visa had been granted. Miroslav Antic, http://www.antic.org/ Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
