Seselj Wanted a ‘Greater Serbia’

Seselj testified at Karadzic’s trial at the Hague Tribunal on Monday that he wanted and still wants to create a much larger Serbian state, incorporating territory from neighbouring countries.

“It was and still is my general goal, but not the general goal of Serbia and Serbian leadership… It is the goal of the Serbian Radical Party, but no other party,” said Seselj, who was testifying for the defence.

He added that his vision of Serbia was one with no ethnic minorities, but “ethnic unity and harmony among Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Serbs, Muslim Serbs and atheist Serbs”.

He called Bosniaks “Serbs who converted to Islam” and said that “no one can permanently keep the Serbian people divided”.

Seselj is also on trial at the Hague Tribunal for war crimes in Croatia, Serbia’s Vojvodina region and Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1991 and 1993.

Former Bosnian Serb political leader Karadzic is being tried for genocide in Srebrenica, the expulsion of Bosniaks and Croats across Bosnia and Herzegovina terrorising civilians in Sarajevo and taking international peacekeepers hostage.

According to Seselj, late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic provided crucial assistance to local Serbs during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“Without help from Serbia, neither Republika Srpska nor Republika Srpska Kraijna could have survived,” said Seselj.

Prosecutor Alan Tieger confronted Seselj with his own statement in the BBC documentary series ‘The Death of Yugoslavia’ that Milosevic directly asked him in 1992 to send volunteer fighters to Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that an attack on Zvornik in April that year was “planned in Belgrade”.

Seselj said that that statement was “exaggerated” and that he said it because of his then conflict with Milosevic.

Prosecutor Tieger reminded Seselj that, before the war, he had threatened Bosniaks with expulsion all the way to Anatolia, but the witness replied that he meant “pan-Islamists, not all Muslims”.

“I was calling on Muslims not to go to war with Serbs, that they would suffer the most. And they did – of 100,000 victims, 50,000 to 60,000 were Muslims… The aim of my threats was to prevent war,” said Seselj.

The trial of Karadzic continues on Tuesday.