May 4, 2002	Saturday	Safar 20, 1423

THE HAGUE, May 3: Slobodan Milosevic and Kosovo President Ibrahim Rugova traded verbal bullets across a tense courtroom on Friday in a bitter confrontation over the former Serb leader’s role in repression of the renegade province.

Testifying at Milosevic’s trial for war crimes before the U.N. tribunal in The Hague, Rugova accused his erstwhile foe of unleashing a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1999 in a bid to snuff out its independence movement.

Rugova, a mild-mannered academic who led a campaign of passive resistance by Kosovo’s Albanian majority against Milosevic’s rule in the 1990s, laid the blame for alleged Serb massacres of ethnic Albanians firmly at Milosevic’s door.

The former Yugoslav president, defending himself against charges of genocide and crimes against humanity in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo, fired a volley of questions back at the balding writer during fierce cross-examination.

“Mr Rugova, do you think that you personally and the Kosovo Albanians were used as a means of implementing the will of the Great Powers. Yes or No?” asked Milosevic, who has repeatedly accused the West of seeking to destroy Yugoslavia.

“We were not used. The international community came out in our defence and the human rights of our people and the massacres being perpetrated by Belgrade and you. That is the truth,” Rugova replied.

“Well history gives many examples to the contrary,” Milosevic shot back.

Rugova, dressed in a characteristic dark blazer and polka dot scarf, told the court: “Belgrade clearly decided to destroy Kosovo through violence and war.

“This was a calmly done cleansing of the population. We all know what happened in 1998 and 1999,” the bespectacled witness said as Milosevic sat nonchalantly in the dock, scribbling notes and stifling a yawn.

STAGE-MANAGED MEETING: The last time the two rivals came face-to-face was in a meeting stage-managed by the Serb strongman during NATO’s 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. Rugova said the meeting was designed to divide ethnic Albanian opposition to Serb rule.

Milosevic, accused of responsibility for the killing of more than 900 Kosovo Albanians and expulsion of around 800,000 during a violent Serb crackdown that triggered NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia, has conducted his own defence since the trial started in February.

Many of Milosevic’s questions, peppered with references to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Albanian drug gangs and the Nazi occupation of the Balkans in World War Two, were ruled irrelevant by Presiding Judge Richard May.

Milosevic, who has repeatedly accused the West of funding a Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrilla war against Serb rule to tighten its influence on the region, quoted from press reports including one that called the KLA “gangsters and mercenaries”.

The KLA rejected Rugova’s pacifism and started an armed struggle that ultimately drew NATO into the conflict. NATO’s 11-week bombing campaign forced a Serb withdrawal from Kosovo and ushered in moves towards establishing its independence.

Photographs in the press in early April, 1999, showed Rugova and Milosevic smiling at each other during a meeting in Belgrade as thousands of Kosovo Albanians queued at border crossings to neighbouring Macedonia to escape the Serb crackdown.

“Of course they thought that they could compromise me politically and discredit me in the eyes of Kosovo Albanians,” Rugova said.

TRIAL LIVE ON KOSOVO TV: He has since recovered a substantial amount of his political standing and was chosen as president of Kosovo by the territory’s fledgling legislature in March this year.

In Kosovo, Rugova’s tribunal testimony was watched closely by local politicians who huddled round television sets to hear the live broadcast from the Netherlands.

On the streets of Pristina, people said they hoped Rugova would pin Milosevic down with facts about Serb violence in the province, but not all were convinced.

“He can give a lot of evidence, but he has worked with Milosevic and I don’t trust him a bit,” said Hazir Gaglica.

The silver-haired defendant leaned back nonchalantly in his chair when Rugova told the court Milosevic had justified the Serb crackdown in Kosovo at a meeting with him in 1998 by branding a separatist campaign in the province as “terrorism”.

To convict Milosevic over Kosovo, the prosecutors must prove not only that atrocities against ethnic Albanians took place but also that he knew about them or should have known about them.

Any evidence Rugova can provide about information he passed on to Milosevic or how involved the Yugoslav ex-president was in the security forces’ chain of command could help make that case.—Reuters