Wanted Serbs Submit to War Crimes Tribunal

Two senior Serb figures wanted in connection with alleged war crimes in the Balkans surrendered yesterday to the United Nations tribunal in the Hague.

Milan Martic, a politician who led Serb rebel forces against Croatia's breakaway from the former Yugoslavia in the early years of the Balkans conflict, and Mile Mrksic, a former Yugoslav general, flew from Belgrade to give themselves up. Both were at one time close to the former Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, who is on trial at the Hague for war crimes.

Mr Mrksic, 54, was wanted in connection with the killing of more than 200 civilians taken from Vukovar in 1991 and killed at a pig farm before being buried in a mass grave.

Mr Martic, 56, was sought in connection with the shelling of the Croatian capital, Zagreb, four years later. Before leaving Belgrade for the Hague yesterday, he said the shelling had been aimed at military targets, not civilian ones.

Still on the wanted list are the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, and the former general Ratko Mladic, along with 16 others.

Yesterday's surrenders came on the most important day yet in the Milosevic trial, the first time that evidence was presented by someone claiming to have been an insider in the regime.

Ratomir Tanic, a secret-police informer who said he had been in contact with MI6 in Belgrade, claimed to have been a political adviser to the New Democracy party which was in coalition with Mr Milosevic.

Mr Tanic is to be given a new identity and a new home in a secret location after the trial to prevent reprisals.

He told the tribunal that Mr Milosevic had his own secret "chain of command" for prosecuting the Kosovo war and that the original aim of the campaign was to ethnically cleanse half of the Albanian population of the province, leaving Kosovo with about 1 million Albanians and under Serbian control.

Publicly, Mr Tanic was a prominent opponent of the Milosevic regime in Belgrade in the mid-90s. But he was also working as an informer for the secret police and in the years running up to the 1999 war he was tasked with secret negotiations with the Kosovo Albanians. He said he had met Mr Milosevic six or seven times during this period.

Mr Milosevic, cross-examining Mr Tanic, denied that Mr Tanic had insider knowledge and insisted he was a marginal figure: "You claim you had direct contact with me... You never had a personal meeting with me. The first Serb to testify is a false witness."

The former president accused him of working with British intelligence to concoct the charge sheet.

Mr Tanic accused Mr Milosevic of wicked cynicism in his Kosovo policy, deliberately dragging out the war and hoping for a greater civilian toll among Serbs in order to achieve a propaganda victory over Nato. He said Mr Milosevic was receiving information on Nato bombing targets and was deciding when to evacuate the targets or when to let people be bombed.

According to Mr Tanic, Mr Milosevic knew that the main state television building in Belgrade was to be bombed in 1999 but did not have the building evacuated. More than a dozen people were killed.