Milosevic: I'll name British leaders who helped me By Julius Strauss and Philip Sherwell in Belgrade and Joe Murphy in London
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC is planning to embarrass Britain and other Western governments by revealing at his war crimes trial at The Hague the secret deals which he claims propped up his regime during a decade of bloodshed in the Balkans.
Lawyers for the deposed Serbian president will name three former Foreign Secretaries, Lord Hurd, Lord Carrington and Lord Owen, in a strategy designed to implicate British and American diplomatic figures in the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia.
They will claim that he was given a "green light" for many of his most controversial actions, including the use of force, by Western governments. Branimir Gugl, one of Milosevic's lawyers, told The Telegraph yesterday: "Mr Milosevic feels that Nato are the real criminals and that will be part of his defence."
Milosevic will argue that the British peers, along with Foreign Office diplomats, were involved in negotiating peace deals that were designed to maintain him in power despite his record.
Lord Hurd's later role as a director of National Westminster Bank in striking a lucrative deal with Milosevic to refinance the Serbian economy is likely to be highlighted during the trial. Milosevic is expected in court on Tuesday.
The former president, nicknamed the Butcher of Belgrade for his pitiless treatment of ethnic minorities, is said to feel betrayed by Western negotiators.
A Senior Foreign Office official said: "We will not be surprised if Lord Hurd's dealings with Milosevic are raised during the trial but in fact our hands are clean, we have nothing to hide. The French government may well be nervous about its own friendly relationship with Milosevic right up to 1999 being brought up."
Lord Hurd, who aroused controversy by opposing American plans to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia's Muslims, later became the deputy chairman of NatWest Markets and brokered a deal to privatise Serbia's telecoms service. At a secret business breakfast with Milosevic, he was accompanied by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, formerly Britain's most senior woman diplomat, who had also joined the bank.
The French are believed to have maintained communications with the Serbs during the Nato bombing campaign which was beset by leaks of targets. Serbs claimed that Gen Bernard Janvier, a French former UN commander, secretly promised to veto air strikes in 1995 provided that they released 300 UN hostages. A month later, the Bosnian Serb army attacked Srebrenica, killing 7,000 Muslims in Europe's biggest war crime in 50 years.
Milosevic's lawyers plan to call former peace envoys to give evidence. These include Lord Carrington, the chief negotiator for the European Union in 1991-92, Lord Owen, who co-brokered the 1993 Vance-Owen peace deal, and Richard Holbrooke, the American who brokered the Dayton accord on Bosnia.
They, in turn, are likely to explain that whatever their misgivings about Milosevic, his position as "strong man" in the region meant that they could not ignore him.
Officials in The Hague, where Milosevic has been held since Thursday, say they expect to broaden his charges to include genocide. Milosevic was under close supervision last night; his parents committed suicide and there are fears that he might try to do the same.