11 September 2004	Saturday	25 Rajab 1425

AMSTERDAM: The marathon trial of Slobodan Milosevic shows that future war crimes proceedings against senior figures must be stricter, more concise and preferably conducted where the crimes were committed, legal experts say.

After UN judges ruled that the former Yugoslav president was not well enough to continue to defend himself and imposed counsel on him to make sure his trial is completed, several lawyers said the court should have been tougher sooner.

The ailing former Serb strongman is the first former head of state to be tried by an international tribunal and the conduct of his trial will set precedents for how other suspects of crimes against humanity are handled, for example in Iraq or at the new International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Judith Armatta from the Coalition for International Justice, an independent group monitoring the Milosevic trial, rejected criticism of the drawn-out proceedings, saying new ground in international law was being broken through trial and error.

"International justice is in its infancy," she said. A group of pro-Milosevic lawyers headed by former US attorney general Ramsey Clark who oppose imposing defence lawyers say it could constitute an "irrevocable precedent".

Other international lawyers said future tribunals should be stricter to minimize Milosevic-style political grandstanding. "The trial has been fair. In fact it has been too fair," said former UN war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone. "He's been allowed to have his cake and eat it. He's been disparaging of the tribunal but expects all his rights to be upheld."

VICTOR'S JUSTICE?: But some lawyers said stopping Milosevic defending himself could undermine the legitimacy of the trial in the former Yugoslavia. Milosevic said the decision violated human rights and international law and he would appeal against it.

"They have to get this thing moving faster but on the other hand they have to worry about the legitimacy of it back in Serbia," said Gary Bass, professor of international affairs at Princeton University, who follows the tribunal closely.

"The audience you're trying to reach is not other international lawyers but the people in the region." Bass said the fact Saddam Hussein will be tried by an Iraqi tribunal could give its findings more legitimacy, despite concerns that Iraqi judges and prosecutors lack the experience and capacity to handle such a case.

"I don't think you should automatically assume that international trials are the best way to go," he said. "If Serbia had been remotely willing to hold its own trial it would have been much more effective. You wouldn't have had accusations of victor's justice."

UN prosecutors in The Hague are considering handing over some cases to national courts in Croatia, but have repeatedly complained about Serbia's lack of cooperation.

The UN court in Tanzania trying those accused of taking part in Rwanda's 1994 genocide has said it will pass several cases to national courts in Kigali as it struggles to complete all its investigations by a 2008 deadline.

TOUGH JUSTICE: Richard Dicker of New York-based Human Rights Watch said delays to the Milosevic trial were being seized on by those who oppose the ICC, which is backed by more than 90 states but spurned by the United States.

Signatories to the ICC, the first permanent global criminal court set up to try perpetrators of genocide, war crimes and human rights abuses, are meeting this week in The Hague.

Dicker said he was lobbying the ICC to do more to build connections with the countries where crimes were committed, a task the Yugoslavia tribunal recognised belatedly. -Reuters