Slobodan Milosevic clashed with the presiding judge at his war crimes trial today over his cross-examination of a "protected" prosecution witness.
The former Yugoslav president was cut short several times by Judge Richard May and ordered to stick to the point as he led the witness, a moderate Croatian Serb politician identified only as C037, through a catalogue of alleged atrocities committed against Serbs in the Western Slavonia area of Croatia in late 1991.
When Milosevic's microphone failed at one point as he was asking a question. Judge May said: "We can't hear you but it sounds that what you are saying is irrelevant".
The judge went on: "You are trying to argue your entire case through this witness, which is a waste of the court's time".
Milsoevic, who on Monday had questioned the crediblity of the witness on the grounds that his evidence consisted almost entirely of hearsay, denials and memory lapses, replied: "Mr May, I expected you to make such comments to the prosecution in their examination.
"He [the witness] was asked if he heard about something or read it in a newspaper or saw it on Croatian TV, but I am only asking him what he knows. So you accept testimony of something heard in the examination-in-chief but you not allowing me to do so".
Milosevic continued his cross-questioning, trying to establish an inventory of how many Serbian villages in the region had been destroyed and again likening the Croatian government to that country's "fascist" regime during World War II after a resurgence of extreme nationialist feeling in the late 1980s and early 1990s.