Military

DATE=7/14/2004

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=MILOSEVIC TRIAL (L ONLY)

NUMBER=2-317497

BYLINE=BARRY WOOD

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

HEADLINE:

INTRO: Ill health has again postponed until next week (July 19th) Slobodan Milosevic's opening defense against war crimes charges at The Hague tribunal in the Netherlands. VOA's Barry Wood reports the case against the former Yugoslav leader was discussed Wednesday at a forum in Washington.

TEXT: Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, legal scholar Tatiana Vaksberg says the international tribunal faces a tough challenge in determining how to bring the Milosevic trial to conclusion. It has been under way for over two years and has lost 66 trial days because of the former Serbian leader's ill health. Mr. Milosevic, who doesn't recognize the court but is acting as his own counsel, plans to call 14-hundred witnesses in his defense. The trial, she says, could continue for another two years.

Ms. Vaksberg, a Bulgarian who has been a public policy scholar at the Wilson Center, says the proceedings are very important because this is the first time a former head of state has been put on trial for genocide.

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"Of course the result of the trial, the course of the trial, the decision of the judges will have the greatest impact on international law in general, on international justice in general."

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The Milosevic case has assumed new significance since the arrest of former Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein, who unlike the former Serbian leader is to be tried in his home country. Ms. Vaksberg says the Milosevic prosecution faces additional pressure because the special tribunal, except for the cases against Bosnian Serb indictees Radovan Karadjic and Ratko Mladic, has been ordered to wind up its activities by the end of 2008.

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"Those are the two exceptions about which the tribunal is constantly speaking, saying that even with the completion strategy the tribunal will not close its doors before Karadjic and Mladic are arrested."

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Like Mr. Milosevic, the two Bosnian Serbs, who have been on the run (who have eluded capture) for nearly a decade, are accused of, among other things, war crimes for the murder of thousands of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995.

Ms. Vaksberg says the case against Mr. Milosevic is very complex and that a conviction is by no means certain. (SIGNED)

NEB/BDW/KL/PT