Slobodan Milosevic makes speech at the Hague Tribunal

Slobodan Milosevic, the ex-president of Yugoslavia, will finish his speech at the court session in the Hague at about 3:00 p.m. Moscow time. Milosevic’s speech has reportedly taken nine hours. Milosevic accused Prosecutor General Carla Del Ponte of the fabrication of the evidence. The first witnesses are going to testify after the speech from the ex-president of Yugoslavia: Milosevic’s allies and adversaries.

The first witness at the litigation has already become known. This is the former leader of the Albanian communists Mahmut Bakalli. Bakalli is already in the Hague, waiting to be summoned to court. He was a member of the delegation of the Kosovo’s Albanians which participated in the negotiations pertaining to Kosovo in 1998, which were mediated by the US special envoy Richard Holbrooke.

Dragoslav Ognjanovic, Milosevic’s legal adviser, rejected the false rumors published in the newspaper Sunday Times, which said that the ex-president of Yugoslavia was going to use the services of the lawyer. Milosevic’s position is still the same: the Hague Tribunal is illegal and Milosevic can stand for himself alone.

The International Committee in Milosevic's defense handed 120 thousand signatures over to the secretary of the Hague Tribunal. The signatures were collected in Serbia, and the people signed their names for the release of the Yugoslavian leader.

Belgrade realized that it would not be nice to take the position of the complete outsider, so the government of Belgrade addressed the administration of the Hague Tribunal with a request to allow them to send the observers from Serbia to the litigation. Yugoslavia’s Foreign Ministry said that such a measure would assist in making the process more open.

RIA Novosti informed that the deputies of the Russian parliament passed a decree in connection with the process in the Hague. Russia’s president offered to address to the UN’s Security Council with a requirement to set the interim framework, within which the International Tribunal could carry out its jurisdiction on the former Yugoslavia. As the document said, “it is deeply concerning that the legal persecution of the International Tribunal for former Yugoslavia is gaining the character of political proceedings; the tribunal has not considered the actions of the Albanian extremists, which committed heinous crimes against the humanity. Furthermore, the responsibility for the jurisdiction, including those crimes, which were committed against the humanity, must be tried in the national legal systems of the sovereign states that were formed on the territory of the former united republic of Yugoslavia.

Sergey Yugov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov