'Milosevic behind 130,000 deaths'

Slobodan Milosevic embarked on an obsessive quest for power which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, his war crimes tribunal heard today.

The former Yugoslav president, 61, who led his country into 10 years of war, is accused of ordering genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. He is said to have been behind the deaths of 130,000 people, including many women and children, and acts of aggression which saw a further three million driven from their homes.

British barrister Geoffrey Nice QC told the tribunal in The Hague how Milosevic craved an empire within the disintegrating former communist country which he would forcibly make Serbian, under his own control.

The court was shown maps of Serbia's land gains under Milosevic's regime. "They wanted to be the ruling force in Yugoslavia, to create an enormous area joined up to Serbia and under his control," said Mr Nice.

He detailed how achieving this goal involved moving into parts of Croatia and later Bosnia, slaughtering many of the non-Serb population. Even in areas where Serbs were outnumbered threetoone, Milosevic was able to rule by seizing control of the police and by arming Serb civilians.

Milosevic appeared unmoved by today's descriptions of his empirebuilding. He occasionally made notes but otherwise appeared oblivious to the court events around him.

Yesterday, the opening day of the trial expected to last two years, Mr Nice described atrocities committed by Serb forces, including the burning to death of a Bosnian woman and her newborn child. Fellow prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said acts of this kind committed with Milosevic's blessing were carried out with "mediaeval savagery and calculated cruelty".

The former president, the first head of state ever to be indicted for war crimes while still in office, has been in custody in the Netherlands since the new Yugoslav authorities handed him over last summer. He faces 66 counts and could be jailed for life if convicted on a single charge by a panel of three judges including Briton Richard May.

The £30million case will be the biggest of its kind since the Nuremburg trials.

The hearing continues.

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