STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Start Your Own FREE Email List at http://www.listbot.com/links/joinlb ---------------------------------------------------------------------- [A plan to meet Milosevic at noon (1000 GMT) was disrupted when baggage [the defence team] had been bringing in for him from Belgrade was found to be missing after their JAT Yugoslav airlines flight from Belgrade arrived at Schipol airport near The Hague. "We were waiting at the airport for one and a half hours to get luggage for Mr Milosevic. His personal things have disappeared," Tomanovic told Reuters. They had not been found. Yugoslavia's Tanjug news agency later quoted him as saying the lost suitcase contained materials needed for the hearing.] Lawyers in Hague to defend Milosevic By Paul Gallagher THE HAGUE, July 2 (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic's lawyers flew in from Belgrade on Monday to prepare his defence on war crimes charges at The Hague -- but hit a snag when luggage for the detained former Yugoslav president went missing in transit. Five days after being handed over to the United Nations, Milosevic face his accusers for the first time on Tuesday. He is expected to plead not guilty in court to charges of crimes against humanity for Serb ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999. The lawyers said they expected to spend several hours at the U.N. remand centre in The Hague where Milosevic has been held in isolation since being surrendered last Thursday in a stealthy manoeuvre by the reformist opponents who toppled him in October. Attorneys Zdenko Tomanovic and Dragan Krgovic will discuss Tuesday morning's brief arraignment hearing. They met officials at the International Criminal Tribunal building to begin the process of registering themselves formally as defence counsel. A plan to meet Milosevic at noon (1000 GMT) was disrupted when baggage they had been bringing in for him from Belgrade was found to be missing after their JAT Yugoslav airlines flight from Belgrade arrived at Schipol airport near The Hague. "We were waiting at the airport for one and a half hours to get luggage for Mr Milosevic. His personal things have disappeared," Tomanovic told Reuters. They had not been found. Yugoslavia's Tanjug news agency later quoted him as saying the lost suitcase contained materials needed for the hearing. Asked by Reuters how his client would plead, Tomanovic said: "We will see (about) that when we meet Milosevic." A trial is not expected to start until next year. DEFIANT DEFENCE It will be the first visit Milosevic has received at the Scheveningen detention centre and his first face-to-face discussion in The Hague with the legal team, reported to have been picked by his strong-willed wife, Mira Markovic. Tomanovic has been on an eight-strong team defending Milosevic since his arrest in April on corruption charges. The lawyers were carrying packages from Milosevic's family, believed to be books, clothes and money he had requested. Milosevic has refused to recognise the authority of the court, which he sees as a tool of the Western NATO forces which bombed Yugoslavia in 1999 during the Kosovo war. "In his telephone conversation with Mrs Markovic, he said he wanted his defence to be political as he considers all the accusations against him to be political," one legal source privy to the discussions with the family in Belgrade told Reuters. "He said the real war criminals were the leaders of NATO and that they should be tried and not him." Such defiance is unlikely to cut much ice in The Hague but is typical of a man who, insiders say, has lost touch with reality after 13 years at the pinnacle of power in the Balkans. Yet lawyers familiar with the case said chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte would also have her work cut out making the charges stick and proving Milosevic was personally responsible. "I think we cannot underestimate the case," Nancy Paterson, an American lawyer who has just left the tribunal's prosecutor's office, told the New York Times on Monday. "There are pieces missing," said Paterson, who helped draw up the indictment in 1999 that made Milosevic the first head of state ever to be charged with war crimes while in office. "You need to establish what the real chain of command was." It remains to be seen whether further evidence against the former strongman will be delivered by the new authorities in Belgrade, who are struggling to defuse a political crisis sparked by nationalist opposition to handing Milosevic over. HISTORIC TRIAL With the final composition of the defence team far from settled, Belgrade newspapers said on Monday that Milosevic and his wife were considering hiring foreign attorneys. Vecerne Novosti said former U.S. Attorney-General Ramsay Clark, who served under U.S. President Jimmy Carter and is sympathetic to Serb hardliners, was being considered. The challenge of defending him would attract many lawyers. "Milosevic is dead as a politician but he is a part of history. He is a historical figure," a legal source said. But Milosevic and his wife were far from easy clients: "It will be difficult to defend a person who sees himself in a special way and as a historic figure and who himself, together with his wife, interferes in defence deciding on the 'best strategy'," one Belgrade lawyer said. Another attorney who has worked on the defence has said Milosevic did not accept the reality that he faced life in jail. In Belgrade, internal ructions from the Serbian government's lightning covert move to hand the ousted strongman over to the UN tribunal continue, with the future of Serbia's links to little Montenegro in the rump Yugoslav federation under threat. But in a newspaper interview Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic stressed the benefits of the handover in terms of Western aid pledges of over $1 billion that came in on Friday. 07:25 07-02-01 ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
