The first day of his cross-examination, Slobodan Milosevic's defense witness denies that the massacre in Srebrenica and the shelling of Dubrovnik happened and that the Joint Command was ever operational in Kosovo. Describing himself as a "Herzegovinian from Kosovo", he says he joined the VRS as a volunteer and served there in 1993 and 1994


VJ general Bozidar Delic, Slobodan Milosevic's defense witness, refuses to accept that between 7,000 and 8,000 Bosniaks were killed in Srebrenica ten years ago. What he does accept is that "two to three thousand Serbs and several thousands of Muslims" were killed in Srebrenica. He did not define what he meant by the expression "several thousands of Muslims".

At the beginning of the cross-examination by prosecutor Geoffrey Nice, General Delic also denied that the shelling of Dubrovnik and its Old Town in December 1991 ever happened. His former JNA colleague, Vice-Admiral Miodrag Jokic admitted that the Old Town was shelled, and General Pavle Strugar never really denied it.

What Milosevic's defense witness did not deny is that in 1993 and 1994 he served in BH, first as the chief of staff and then as the chief of security in the VRS 715 Brigade. Having described himself as a Serb from Kosovo at the beginning of his testimony, General Delic now said he was "of Herzegovinian origin" and that he had gone to Bileca as a "volunteer". In his opinion, there's nothing unusual about the fact that he "continued to receive his salary from the military of another state," the FRY, even as he served in the military of "an entity that was still unrecognized at the time," as the prosecutor noted. General Delic first said "Bosnia was not another state, but an integral part of Yugoslavia," but then corrected himself, admitting that it was indeed an internationally recognized state, and adding that he had gone there "not to defend Americans but parts of [his] own people."

As his cross-examination continued today, General Delic denied that the Joint Command was ever operational in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999. The Joint Command was a political body that issued orders to the VJ and Serbian MUP, bypassing the legal chain of command. He did not budge even when the prosecutor showed him a document he had signed himself – submitted by the defense in a mass of its exhibits. Delic signed it as the commander of the 549 Motorized Brigade and the first sentence reads, "Pursuant to the order of the Joint Command…"

Despite the existence of a document that proves otherwise, General Delic maintains that the Joint Command "could not issue orders," because it was "just a concept" and a "coordinating body", it did not have "its own military post code, its stamp and its commander." As for the order he signed himself in which he referred to the Joint Command, the witness tried to make the prosecutor and judges believe that "this was insignificant, because the Pristina Corps was behind it."

General Bozidar Delic's cross-examination will continue tomorrow.

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