Prosecution Rests In Slobo Trial

War crimes prosecutors abruptly rested their case against former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic on Wednesday, bringing the landmark trial to its halfway point two years after it opened.

U.N. judges accepted a motion submitted earlier in the day and declared "the prosecution case is hereby closed."

The latest twist in the case followed the unexpected announcement on Sunday that the presiding judge, Richard May of Britain, was resigning because of ill health.

Prosecutors had planned to call four more witnesses and submit an unknown number of documents in two remaining days of hearings.

But they filed a motion to end their case prematurely because Milosevic has been ill for the last two weeks and because of May's decision to step down.

May, 65, presided with a stern hand over two years of hearings and nearly 300 witnesses, often locking horns with Milosevic, who is defending himself.

May said in a letter to the tribunal that his illness made it impossible for him to stay on. The nature of the health issue was not disclosed.

Milosevic, 61, has had high blood pressure and repeated bouts of fatigue that have delayed the trial by 65 days since it began in February 2002.

In their motion, prosecutors said May's resignation "may pose serious difficulties for the overall timetable of the case" and are most likely to delay the start of Milosevic's defense.

"With these considerations in mind and with concern for the due administration of justice and judicial economy, the prosecutor closes the case by this filing on the basis of all evidence already adduced," the motion said.

At the same time, judges rejected a series of prosecution requests to submit additional material into evidence, saying it was too late for the defense to consider it.

Among the rejected evidence were recordings of closed Serbian parliamentary sessions, an interview Milosevic gave to Serbian television channel Palma, and transcripts of interviews in the documentaries "Death of Yugoslavia" and "Fall of Milosevic."

In a Dec. 12, 2000, interview with Serbian television station Palma, Milosevic gave "candid and unrehearsed comments on a number of issues," including his ties to Serbian forces responsible for atrocities in Croatia, the prosecution filing said.

May's replacement will be appointed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. That replacement must become familiar with 30,000 pages of court transcripts and 600,000 pages in the prosecution case.

Although May's resignation takes effect May 31, he had not been expected to return to court. Decisions in coming months will be taken by the remaining judges: Patrick Robinson of Jamaica and O-Gon Kwon of South Korea.

Milosevic has the right to contest the appointment of a new judge and could even call for a retrial, but the court will have the final say.

"It would be very interesting to see how much time the substitute judge would need to become familiarized with the record of the proceedings," one of Milosevic's legal associates, Zdenko Tomanovic, said in a statement. "Milosevic will then decide what is in the interest of justice and in the interest of the truth."

In his defense, the former Yugoslav president has said he plans to call a large number of international witnesses, including Western military and political leaders.

Milosevic, who faces 66 counts of war crimes related to the Balkan wars of the 1990s, maintains that he should be credited for negotiating the peace agreement ending those wars.

Legal scholars consider his trial the most significant since Nazi leaders were tried after World War II. If the trial fails, or if Milosevic escapes judgment because of ill health, it could undermine the push to make proceedings like the tribunal a regular part of international law.

Milosevic, who holds a law degree, was a gas company manager and banker before he began to rise through Yugoslavia's socialist political class. He became president of Serbia, the dominant state in the Yugoslav federation, in 1989, and president of Yugoslavia in 1997.

He left office in October 2000 following a disputed election. But he was in power during each of the four wars that marked Yugoslavia's disintegration.

Macedonia left peacefully. But in 1991, Milosevic sent his army into losing wars against the pro-independence republics of Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia. His brutal attempts to put down an ethnic Albanian rebellion in Serbia's province of Kosovo led to NATO airstrikes that ultimately pushed his forces out of the province in 1999.

Milosevic is charged with crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. In Bosnia and Croatia he is also charged with grave breaches of the Geneva conventions.

He faces an additional charge of genocide in Bosnia. The tribunal's indictment alleges Milosevic, "acting alone or in concert with other members of the joint criminal enterprise, planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation and execution of the destruction, in whole or in part, of the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat national, ethnical, racial or religious groups, as such, in territories within Bosnia and Herzegovina."

The challenge for prosecutors is to link Milosevic to the actual atrocities, some of which were carried out by irregular forces and paramilitary units. For example, the Croatia indictment accuses Milosevic of "providing financial, logistical and political support and direction to Serbian irregular forces and paramilitaries."