Croat leader tells court Milosevic wanted war

The first head of state to testify against Slobodan Milosevic at the United Nations war crimes tribunal yesterday portrayed him as a cold and ruthless warmonger, determined to break up Yugoslavia and create an ethnically pure Greater Serbia.

In powerful testimony at The Hague, Stjepan Mesic, the President of Croatia, accused Mr Milosevic of engineering the disintegration of the country, and of using the army to seize Croatian land in pursuit of his expansionist aims.

Mr Mesic, a longstanding adversary of the accused, told the court the former Yugoslav president "did not favour any kind of Yugoslavia that was federal or confederal. What he was interested in was a Greater Serbia built on the ruins of Yugoslavia".

Even before Mr Mesic arrived in court, the animosity between the two was clear. "This witness is problematic in every way because of his criminal role in destroying Yugoslavia," Mr Milosevic said. He faces 61 charges for war crimes, including genocide for his role in atrocities in Bosnia.

Mr Mesic is an important witness for the prosecution because he had extensive dealings with Mr Milosevic, having held the collective rotating Yugoslav presidency in 1991. In court yesterday Mr Mesic, a former lawyer who was elected Croatian President two years ago, avoided eye contact with Mr Milosevic but pulled no punches in his testimony.

When asked to describe Mr Milosevic's character, he said: "I never saw any sign of feeling in him, ever." He called Mr Milosevic a manipulator who dispensed with associates when they had achieved what he wanted. "All he had was goals he was implementing," Mr Mesic added.

This testimony will support the prosecution's central claim that Mr Milosevic was determined to create a Greater Serbia through mass persecution and ethnic cleansing. There was detailed evidence giving a snapshot of how the former Serb leader took control of the federal army, budget and presidency and turned them into Serb entities.

Mr Mesic had pleaded for UN intervention at the time, writing that "the army has become exclusively Serb and Milosevic is tearing down the Yugoslav federation". He also said Mr Milosevic used Serbs living in Croatia to further his ambitions.

"The Serbs in Croatia were needed only to ignite the fuse in order for the war to be transferred to [neighbouring] Bosnia-Herzegovina. With regard to Croatia, whatever territory could be wrested from it would be joined to Greater Serbia," Mr Mesic said.

The court was also read minutes from a 1991 meeting of the federal presidency in which Mr Mesic, the President, had warned of Serbian imperialism. Mr Mesic described how Mr Milosevic siphoned money from the coffers of the Yugoslav federation and took control of the National Bank to finance a Serb army and help Serb rebels in Croatia. "What they want is territory. They want to grab Croatian land and trick the army into doing it for them," the prosecutor Geoffrey Nice quoted Mr Mesic as saying.

Today Mr Milosevic will cross-examine the witness.