Former Yugoslav leader Mr Slobodan Milosevic has rejected lawyers appointed for him by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, his Belgrade attorneys said today.
The tribunal said yesterday it was appointing three lawyers as amici curiae - friends of the court meant to ensure the defendant gets a fair trial.
Mr Milosevic - accused of crimes against humanity for atrocities committed in Kosovo and set to face a genocide charge for crimes from the Bosnian war - has refused to recognise the court and his attorneys said the same stance applied to the new lawyers.
The former president told his legal advisers that he would refuse any contact with his newly-appointed pseudo-defenders , the Belgrade lawyers said in a statement.
Mr Milosevic, a law graduate, has branded the tribunal an illegal, political court and said he will defend himself.
Mr Branislav Tapuskovic, the head of the Serbian Lawyers' Association appointed as one of the three friends of the court , said he had expected Mr Milosevic's reaction but he and his colleagues would still try to contact the former leader.
Mr Briton Steven Kay and Dutch advocate Mr Mischa Wladimiroff are the other two lawyers named by the court.
Mr Tapuskovic said he planned to meet with Wladimiroff on Sunday in Belgrade to discuss how they could best fulfil their duty.
Mr Wladimiroff represented Bosnian Serb police reserivst Dusko Tadic, the first person to be sentenced by the Hague tribunal in a full-length trial. Tadic was jailed in 1997 for 20 years for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Mr Kay acted for Alfred Musema, a former Rwandan tea factory boss convicted in 2000 of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda - sister institution to the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague.