Serb president supports Karadzic at Yugoslav war crimes tribunal

PanARMENIAN.Net - One Bosnian Serb leader has given evidence in defence of another at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal, blaming Muslims' wishes for an Islamic state in Bosnia for fuelling the country's ethnic war, Belfast Telegraph said.

Radovan Karadzic, accused by United Nations prosecutors of orchestrating Serb atrocities throughout the 1992-95 Bosnian war, called one of his successors, Milorad Dodik, as a defence witness at his long-running genocide trial.

Dodik, like Karadzic, is using his evidence at the tribunal in the Netherlands to blame Muslims for the war in Bosnia that killed 100,000, accusing the Muslims' wartime leader Alia Izetbegovic of "fanaticism" in seeking to turn Bosnia into an Islamic state.

One of Karadzic's key defence arguments is that Serbs only took up arms as a last resort to protect themselves from Muslim aggression.