The Hague - The UN War Crimes Court yesterday set the trial of Mr Slobodan Milosevic for February 12th, as the former Yugoslav president ridiculed the charges against him. On the second day of a preparatory hearing Judge Richard May said he wanted to speed up Mr Milosevic's trial for his alleged role in atrocities during the 1998-99 conflict in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
Mr Milosevic, who also faces charges of war crimes in Croatia during the 1991-95 war, dismissed the court hearing, telling Judge May "this whole thing becomes clearly a farce". He said: "Don't bother me and make me listen for hours on end to the reading of texts written at the intellectual level of a seven-year-old child." Then he added: "Let me correct myself: a retarded seven-year-old child."
Mr Milosevic said there was no need to maintain a suicide watch on him, as he had absolutely no intention of killing himself.
During his angry monologue, uninterrupted by the court, the 60-year old also accused the "biased tribunal" of covering up NATO aggression in Kosovo. He said the case against him was "giving wings to Albanian terrorists in southern Serbia", and he linked Albanian separatists to Osama bin Laden. Human Rights Watch praised the court for letting the defendant speak freely.