- (AFP) - Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic
told his war crimes trial that NATO and the West had fabricated an "ocean
of lies" to back the 1999 war on Yugoslavia.
"This is just an atom of truth in the ocean of lies and the product
of propaganda and the use of global media as a means of war against my
country," Milosevic said Thursday after presenting a nearly hour-long
video on the Kosovo war.
The video cast doubt on the January 1999 massacre of ethnic Albanian civilians
in Racak and charged that the West fabricated allegations of a Serbian
plan to ethnically cleanse the province of its Albanian population.
"This terrible fabrication," Milosevic argued, was used to whip
up public opinion in favor of a war against Yugoslavia.
Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians fled Kosovo to avoid NATO air
bombs in 1999, Milosevic contended.
"Now they wish to negate that fact by saying that they in fact fled
from Serb forces," he said.
Milosevic opened his defense by showing the UN war crimes court a video
discussing the 1999 massacre of ethnic Albanians in Racak, which triggered
the NATO air war that effectively drove federal Yugoslav troops from Kosovo.
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