THE HAGUE/WAR CRIMES: The first international war crimes trial of former Kosovo Albanian rebels began yesterday, with three men accused of murdering Serb civilians and suspected collaborators during the 1998-'99 conflict.
The trial at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague started yesterday afternoon after the presiding judge rejected a last-minute defence request to delay it for three weeks over alleged witness intimidation.
Three former members of the now disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) - Fatmir Limaj, Haradin Bala and Isak Musliu - are accused of torturing and murdering civilians in central Kosovo.
Chief Prosecutor Ms Carla del Ponte has expressed concern over reports of attempts to influence witnesses. One Kosovo Albanian man has already appeared before the tribunal to face charges of intimidating or offering bribes to people expected to testify.
The indictment states that KLA forces under Mr Lima rounded up 35 Serb and Albanian civilians from May 1998 and imprisoned them in the Lapusnik Prison Camp, which Mr Limaj and Mr Musliu controlled, and where Mr Bala worked as a guard.
Detainees were held under "brutal and inhumane" conditions and routinely subjected to physical and psychological abuse, the indictment says, and 14 were murdered before Serb forces took control of the area in July 1998.
Macedonian Prime Minister Mr Hari Kostov resigned yesterday after less than six months in office, saying reforms were being neglected because of one coalition party's preoccupation with its ethnic agenda.
"I am not ready to put up with inefficient work in the government, including putting conditions on and blocking the reform process, in the political sphere and above all in the economic sphere," the Prime Minister told reporters in Skopje.
His resignation from the centre-left coalition came a week after the country defeated an opposition-backed referendum that would have reversed ethnic power-sharing laws designed to give the 25 per cent Albanian minority more autonomy.
Washington and Brussels had praised the government for preventing a Macedonian nationalist backlash against the laws, a crucial part of the 2001 Ohrid peace accord which ended seven months of guerrilla conflict.