Primakov: Milosevic did not want to create a "Greater Serbia"

Yevgeny Primakov, former Russian Foreign Minister and Prime 
Minister, giving testimony in the Hague last week said that 
former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was a peacemaker who 
did not want to fight for a "Greater Serbia". Primakov was 
testifying in defence of Milosevic, who is charged with genocide, 
crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Balkans in the 
1990s.

Primakov said the Western media had portrayed Serbs as 
"aggressors" and after Bill Clinton was elected US President in 
1992, Washington became increasingly anti-Serb. 

"It became ever more apparent that their course was to weaken 
Serbia, to not allow it to gain strength and possibly even to 
complete the process of Yugoslavia's complete disintegration", he 
told the UN tribunal in The Hague.

Primakov, blamed the West, in particular Germany, for fuelling 
violence in Kosovo in the late 1990s by supporting the separatist 
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) despite earlier labelling them 
terrorists.

"The initiators and provocateurs of so many events in Kosovo was 
the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army", he said, adding that a 
mass exodus of refugees from the region started only after NATO 
launched airstrikes in March 1999.

Primakov pointed out that Kosovo in an allusion to the US-led war 
in Iraq, had set a precedent for military action without a UN 
mandate. "This undermines undoubtedly the international order", 
he said.

Primakov said the West was wrong to assume that Milosevic wanted 
to create a "Greater Serbia" or to unify all Serbs in a state as 
the multi-ethnic Yugoslav federation crumbled.

During his first meeting with the former Yugoslav President in 
1993, Primakov said he specifically asked Milosevic whether he 
had plans for a "Greater Serbia".

"He said this could only be achieved in theory and at the price 
of great bloodshed and 'I'm not prepared to do that'". Primakov 
said of Milosevic's reply. "He had no plans and conducted no 
actions to achieve a Greater Serbia."

Primakov noted that Milosevic accepted the 1993 Vance-Owen peace 
plan for Bosnia and imposed an economic blockade after the 
Bosnian Serb parliament rejected the plan. "You wanted a peaceful 
solution", he said to Milosevic.

The 1992-5 Bosnian war ended after US-sponsored talks in Dayton, 
Ohio. Primakov said former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright 
had told him Dayton would not have worked without Milosevic's 
support.

Primakov said Milosevic also tried to stop violence in Kosovo and 
told the Russian Prime Minister on a visit to Belgrade on the eve 
of the NATO bombing he was prepared to pull his forces out of 
Kosovo if NATO withdrew from the border with Macedonia.

"We never had the chance to tell what we had achieved", Primakov 
said. "Barely had our plane taken off than the bombing of the 
airport started."

Milosevic is a graduate in law and has sought to conduct his own 
defence. He refused to enter a plea to the charges laid against 
him, and pleas of not guilty were recorded. The court appointed 
two lawyers last September to conduct his defence, claiming it 
was to prevent delays to the trial due to his poor health. During 
the trial he has been held under poor conditions, denied basic 
justice including medical treatment that was needed.

He wants to call more than 1000 witnesses in his defence 
including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Albright and 
Clinton.

Milosevic has accused the tribunal of bias against him and the 
Serb people, saying it is designed to cover up NATO war crimes in 
Kosovo.