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Defence expert witness Milos Kovic told the UN-backed court in The Hague on Tuesday that the Bosnian Serbs saw no alternative to creating a state of their own during the 1992-95 war.
“Serbs advocated separation, it was the first aim of the war, because they lost the illusion of the survival of a common state,” Kovic told the prosecutor during cross-examination.
Prosecutor Arthur Traldi quoted several official Bosnian Serb documents and statements by Mladic about the expulsion of Muslims from the territory of the planned Serb state.
But Kovic responded that this was “not evidence of ethnic cleansing”.
The prosecutor also quoted that Mladic as saying during a Bosnian Serb parliamentary session in 1994 that there was a “historic chance to create an all-Serb state in which as few enemies would remain as possible”.
But Kovic again insisted that this did not prove that there was a plan to ethnically cleanse the territory.
“All-Serb does not mean that in this state there will be no non-Serbs. This means only the democratic right of the Serb people to self-determination, which other nations had,” he said.
Prosecutor Traldi quoted Mladic saying that “Muslims and Croats are a danger”.
But Kovic responded by saying that the Bosnian Serb army chief was “not talking about Muslims and Croats that remain in the Serbian state, but about those from outside”.
Asked whether it was a coincidence that after Mladic’s speech, almost exclusively Serb territory was carved out, the historian countered: “The Serbs were fighting for self-determination and the creation of a Serb state, not fighting for an ethnically-pure territory. There could not be a Serb state without minorities.”
Mladic is accused of the wartime persecution of Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, which allegedly reached the scale of genocide in six municipalities.
He is also on trial for genocide in Srebrenica, terrorising civilians in Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
The trial continues.
