Milosevic Trial Hears First 'Insider'

Prosecutors produced their first so-called "insider" witness against Slobodan Milosevic on Thursday, a former Yugoslav army officer who said Belgrade declared war on its renegade province of Kosovo.

Nike Peraj, 55, an ethnic Albanian who deserted from the army in June 1999, described the relationships between Serbian police, paramilitary units and the Yugoslav army.

Former Yugoslav leader Milosevic is accused of war crimes in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s. Prosecutors charge him with "command responsibility" -- that he knew or should have known of the crimes but did nothing to stop or punish them.

As president, Milosevic was supreme commander of the army.

"...War was declared on the Albanian population of Kosovo," Peraj said. "It was not openly declared, but by the way things occurred you can say that."

Milosevic argues the true villains in the Kosovo conflict were not his forces but separatist Albanian guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and NATO, which launched air strikes on Yugoslavia to curb its bloody crackdown on the Serbian province's majority Albanians.

Most witnesses up to now have been Kosovo Albanian victims of the crackdown. Some political figures have also testified. But Peraj was the first whom prosecutors term an "insider" witness.

Milosevic, who has appointed no lawyer and is defending himself, contended that military rules allowed the army to be used in peacetime to combat terrorism.

"An army unit, yes, but not the whole army," Peraj told Milosevic in cross-examination. "In Kosovo all the army units that existed in Yugoslavia were used. Only the navy was not used."

The bespectacled witness -- whom Milosevic disparaged as "an officer, albeit a deserter" -- said he met KLA officials three times after the Kosovo conflict.

Milosevic suggested that KLA threats or blackmail had persuaded Peraj to testify in The Hague -- something vehemently rejected by the witness, who said he had come to do his "moral duty."

"I have come here because of the lamenting, the tears of the families, the brothers, sisters, mothers who have been left without loved ones," he declared.

"Many of them have come to me and have asked me if I don't know something about the fate of their loved ones because I was in the army."

Peraj said the Serbian ministry of internal affairs police, known as the MUP, came under Yugoslav army command in wartime, as did the Territorial Defense, an emergency defense force of civilians. "I will never forget the crimes and terrible things that I have seen...committed by forces of the Yugoslav army, MUP, paramilitaries and others," he said.