In his expert report in the defense of Slobodan Milosevic, Cedomir Popov labeled the Western historians writing about the “Greater Serbian hegemonism” as “parascientific dregs” intent on “clearing the path for the new world order and globalism in this part of Europe” with the aid of their “Serb lackeys”

The Greater Serbia myth has been
”maintained, fostered and disseminated across the world” in order to mask the aspirations of the great powers to vanquish Serbia and subjugate it to the new world order and globalism – historian Cedomir Popov, SANU member, insisted in his testimony as an expert witness at the trial of Slobodan Milosevic.

He confirmed the thesis of the accused that in Serbia there never had been any “serious politicians and ideologists” who were enthralled by the idea of Greater Serbia. However, in the last decade of the 20th century there had been “verbal, rhetorical and propaganda-motivated efforts to advocate the liberation and unification of the Serb people”, Popov said today. He stated that the primary advocates of that idea were the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO) including its leader Vuk Draskovic and Seselj's Serbian Radical Party (SRS). The witness added that the Serbian authorities at the time, headed by Milosevic, “effectively fought” such efforts.

In response to Milosevic’s question about paramilitary formations, Popov first mentioned the “Serbian Guard” organized by the SPO and Vuk Draskovic, then volunteers of “a man named Arkan”. He stated that Seselj did not have his paramilitaries, but sent SRS members to join the JNA as volunteers. He explained that at that time the SPO was “in violent opposition” to the Serbian authorities and President Milosevic, whose Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) “appealed for the situation to calm down” after “Draskovic’s excesses” and threats that he would “cut off the arms of those flying green flags.”

While Milosevic tried to discredit Vuk Draskovic through this witness, prosecutor Geoffrey Nice tried to discredit the defense witness at the beginning of his cross-examination. Nice quoted from a section in the expert report in which the SANU member deals with certain French, British and American historians who wrote about Greater Serbian hegemonism and called them “pseudoscientific dregs”. Among the dregs Popov has placed Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel and, which really irritated Nice, historian Audrie Budding, who testified at the Slobodan Milosevic trial as a prosecution expert witness. When Popov was asked to give some explanation for suck description of the fellow-historian, he responded that the report submitted by Budding to the Tribunal was “confused and parascientific” because it “mixed up historical criteria.”

Popov’s opinion of the ICTY is even less favorable than that of Western historians. He expressed it by signing the declaration calling for the dropping of charges against Radovan Karadzic. Nice read out before the court parts of the declaration in which it is claimed that the Tribunal was “illegal”, that its main goal was the “demonization and condemnation of Serbs”, that it was “manipulating” facts in order to “cover up Muslim crimes against Serbs.” In response to Nice’s questions, Popov not only stuck by those views, but went one step further, claiming that the Tribunal was “manipulating the number of people killed in Srebrenica” in order to prove the charges of genocide against Milosevic, make Serbia pay damages to Bosnia and Herzegovina and “condemn the Serb people.”

Popov’s cross-examination will continue tomorrow. After him, SANU member Kosta Mihajlovic will be called to the witness stand. He is one of the authors of the famous SANU Memorandum.

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