Karadzic insists he did ‘everything to avoid war’

FORMER Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic insisted yesterday he did everything possible to avoid conflict and hispeople were victims of Muslim aggression as he ended a boycott of his genocide trial.

Addressing the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the 64-year-old said he would use his trial “to defend the greatness” of the Bosnian Serb nation.

“I will defend that nation of ours and their cause that is just and holy,” he said.

Karadzic is charged as commander of a campaign of genocide targeting Croats and Muslims in the Bosnian war that claimed 100,000 lives and displaced 2.2 million people.

“I stand here before you not to defend the mere mortal that I am, but to defend the greatness of a small nation in Bosnia Hercegovina, which for 500 years has had to suffer and has demonstrated a great deal of modesty and perseverance to survive in freedom,” he said.

Karadzic is accused of having colluded with the late Yugoslav leaderSlobodan Milosevic in a plot to create a “Greater Serbia”, to include 60% of Bosnian territory. Serbs made up about a third of Bosnia’s population.

He told the judges: “There never was any intention, any idea, let alone plan, to expel Muslims and Croats from the [self-proclaimed] Bosnian Serb state Republika Srpska.

“The Serb Democratic Party and Radovan Karadzic and the Serb people in Bosnia Hercegovina did their utmost, everything that could have done, in order to avoid a war.” He said “fundamentalist” Muslims wanted all Serbs out of Bosnia.

“The Serbs were not engaged in action, they were engaged in reaction.”

Karadzic showed the court a photograph of what he claimed was a Bosnian soldier holding the severed head of a Serb fighter.

This illustrated, he said, the Serbs “were dealing with the raging bull, but the office of the prosecutor claims they were dealing with lambs and causing lambs irreparable harm”.

Among the charges against Karadzic are the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of more than 7,000 captured Muslim men and boys, and the 44-month siege of the capital Sarajevo that ended in November 1995 with some 10,000 people killed. He responded that Serbs had acted legitimately to “provocations” from the enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa.

Often referring to himself in the third person as “Dr Karadzic”, the accused presented an array of videos and documents to the court as “evidence” of his contentions.