|
I worked for peace - Milosevic
26/09/2002 16:52 - (SA)
The Hague - Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic told his war crimes trial on Thursday that he worked for peace in the bloody conflicts of Bosnia and Croatia.
Milosevic, presenting his opening defence statement as the trial
moved on from Kosovo to the other two indictments against him, also told the UN court at The Hague that his prosecution was part of a "war" against Serbs.
"I personally invested all my powers in achieving peace," said
Milosevic, reprising an argument he made in the first phase of the trial, which covered events in Kosovo.
Milosevic is now facing the most serious charge of genocide over
the so-called ethnic cleansing of Muslims in the Bosnian conflict, along with a battery of charges laid against him for the war in Croatia, in the 1990s.
He said he "worked for peace (and) not as a protagonist of war"
in the two conflicts, and admitted that Serbia had come to the
defence of Bosnian and Croatian Serbs.
"I am not challenging that Serbs helped the Serbs to survive in
Bosnia and Croatia," he said.
The onetime Serb strongman faces life in prison if convicted by
the UN tribunal, which he again called "illegal" and "part of the
war" he claims has been waged against the Serbian people.
He denounced the "decade long demonisation of Serbs" and
countered that economic sanctions slapped on Yugoslavia in the
aftermath of the wars "can only be qualified as genocide". - Sapa-AFP
|
