Milosevic Opens Long-Delayed Defense, Alleges U.S.-Islam Plot

By Anthony Deutsch
The Associated Press

THE HAGUE -- Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic opened his long-delayed defense at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal Tuesday, describing the battles of his Serbian people as self-defense against internal rebellions and external attacks by Islamic warriors.

Milosevic, charged with genocide and crimes against humanity in the Balkans, portrayed the Serbs as victims rather than aggressors: victims of a plan supported by the United States and Europe to break up Yugoslavia, of an attempt to wipe out Croatia's Serb minority, and of a Saudi-financed plot to create an Islamic state in Bosnia.

Milosevic's statement, launching the second half of what is seen as the most important war crimes trial since World War II, began with a complaint to the judges that he was allotted only four hours to make his opening argument, while prosecutors were given three days to outline their case when the trial began in February 2002.

But presiding judge Patrick Robinson ordered Milosevic to proceed, saying the defense's case had repeatedly been delayed by his frail health.

Originally set for April, it was postponed five times when doctors determined that Milosevic's blood pressure was dangerously high.

In Tuesday's statement, Milosevic compared events in Croatia at the start of the Balkan wars in 1991 to the "genocide of Serbs by Croatian fascists in 1941." He said tens of thousands of Serbs were killed or driven from their homes in Croatia before the Yugoslav army responded.

"This is a classic example of an armed rebellion against a state," he said. "A state has the right to use all means necessary to control the rebellion." Later, Milosevic said, mujahedin fighters flooded into Muslim-dominated Bosnia from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Morocco "to support the first Islamic state in Europe." The Afghans came with arms supplied by the CIA, Milosevic said.