Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic is scheduled to enter a plea Tuesday at the UN war crimes court to the most serious charge against him - genocide during the bloody 1992-95 Bosnia war.
At his fourth appearance before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), judges will also decide whether to hold a joint trial against the former strongman, grouping all three indictments against him.
At his three previous appearances before the Hague-based court, Milosevic, who refuses to recognise the court's legality, put on a show of outspoken defiance, prompting the presiding judge on several occasions to turn his microphone off.
He refused to enter pleas on the other two indictments against him for his role in the conflicts in Croatia between 1991-95 and in the conflict in the Serbian province of Kosovo in 1998-99.
The judges therefore entered pleas of not guilty on his behalf.
At Tuesday's hearing judges will examine a motion from Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte that Milosevic should be tried on all three charges at the same time, as his goal was in each case the same: the creation of an ethnically homogenous 'Greater Serbia'.
She will also argue that his methods throughout the wars which followed the bloody break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s were also the same: so-called ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs in major parts of the former Yugoslav republics.
"One and the same defendant was the brains behind these three operations. It is only logical that there will be one trial," said Jean-Jacques Joris, a spokesman for Del Ponte.
A decision to hold a joint trial would mean that the trial date -- originally set for February 12, 2002 -- will be pushed back to allow the defendant more time to prepare.
At Tuesday's hearing the full text of the indictment wil be read out to Milosevic who has so far refused to read any court documents.
In the Bosnia indictment Milosevic is charged with 29 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Bosnia during 1992 and 1995.
The document states the former president participated in a "joint criminal enterprise" the purpose of which was the "forcible and permanent removal of the majority of non-Serbs, principally Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, from large areas of the Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina".
Among the worst atrocities of the Bosnian war was the July 1995 massacre of about 7,000 Muslim men by Bosnian Serb forces in the eastern town of Srebrenica. The ICTY considers the Srebrenica massacre a genocide.
In August, the tribunal found Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic guilty of genocide in Srebrenica, sentencing him to 46 years in prison.
The indictment holds Milosevic responsible for the killing of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats during the war that left 200,000 dead and one million refugees.
"During the takeover of territories within Bosnia and Hercegovina, thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats were killed and thousands more were imprisoned in over 50 detention facilities under inhuman conditions," the prosecution said.
Milosevic is also charged with several counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the shelling campaign of Sarajevo which killed and wounded thousands of civilians. Last Monday the ICTY started the trial against Bosnian Serb general Stanislav Galic, the commander of the troops that besieged the city -- AFP
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