Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic told a local politician "all the Muslims need to be killed" days before the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys, the Hague tribunal heard today.
Mr Miroslav Deronjic, a former Bosnian Serb politician who has pleaded guilty to war crimes at the tribunal, said he met Mr Karadzic - one of the court's most wanted men - in early July 1995, shortly before Serbs attacked the UN-declared "safe area" of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.
"At one moment, he said the following sentence to me: 'Miroslav, all of them need to be killed. Whatever you can lay your hands on'," Mr Deronjic told a pre-appeal hearing for former Bosnian Serb general Mr Radislav Krstic at the UN court.
Mr Krstic was convicted of genocide in 2001 and jailed for 46 years for the Srebrenica massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two. His appeal is due to begin next week. The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia has charged Mr Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic - to whom Mr Krstic reported - with genocide for the massacre in Srebrenica during the 1992-5 Bosnian war.