PROFESSOR POPOV DESTROYS THE MYTH OF GREATER SERBIA
www.slobodan-milosevic.org – December 15, 2004
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
The trial of Slobodan Milosevic resumed at the Hague Tribunal on Wednesday. Steven Kay, the attorney assigned to represent Milosevic against his will, signaled that he may walk away from his job as early as next month.
Kay said that he was “absolutely furious” that the registrar had changed his status and the terms of his appointment. Mr. Kay did not specify what changes had been made, but he implied that these changes would disadvantage him in the litigation that has been filed against him.
Slobodan Milosevic’s attorney, Nico Steijnen, a founding member of the Slobodan Milosevic Freedom Center, filed litigation against Kay with the Disciplinary Board of the Dutch Bar Association in September. Steijnen charges that Kay is violating the lawyer’s code of conduct by representing Milosevic against his will.
The Judges wouldn’t let Kay fully explain his grievance. Instead they directed him to put it in a written submission.
Following Mr. Kay’s speech, Professor Cedomir Popov resumed his expert testimony regarding the myth of “Greater Serbia.”
He testified that no serious Serbian political leader had ever sought to establish “Greater Serbia.” To bear this out he used the example of World War I.
The Central Powers accused Serbia of waging an aggressive an aggressive “Greater Serbia” policy, and they used that propaganda as the justification to commit atrocities against the Serbs.
Professor Popov said that the Allies offered to establish “Greater Serbia” in the form of the London Agreement. Serbia was offered practically all of the territory of what was to become the SFRY, but Serbia refused to take it.
Instead of establishing the “greater Serbia” that had been offered to them by the great powers, Serbia elected to enter into an equal state together with the Croats, and Slovenes and form Yugoslavia.
This example proves that the Austro-Hungarian propaganda was wrong. There was no Greater Serbia plan. Popov explained that the propaganda about greater-Serbia was just an excuse for the numerous atrocities that the Central powers committed against the Serbs.
During World War I, Serbia lost 1.2 to 1.3 million of its citizens, nearly 1/3 of the Serbian people lost their lives because of the notorious lie that Serbia was waging a policy of Greater Serbia.
Further proof that the “greater Serbia” story is a lie, is the very existence of Macedonia. Professor Popov testified that the Serbian Army liberated present-day Macedonia from the Ottoman Turks during the first Balkan War of 1912. Serbia could have kept this territory and denied the Macedonian people a state, as was done by Bulgaria and Greece, but Serbia gave the Macedonian people the right to self-determination and the Macedonians have their own state today.
Professor Popov briefly dealt with World War II, explaining that the Serbian people overwhelmingly favored the Yugoslav Partisans opposed to the more Serb-oriented Chetniks.
Professor Popov had a document from the O.S.S. (America’s intelligence agency before the CIA). This document stated that Serbia lost 2.5 million people in both world wars. The witness explained that it would have been absurd for Serbia to sacrifice nearly 3 million of its own people to establish and protect Yugoslavia if its real goal had been “Greater Serbia.”
During the examination-in-chief, Milosevic showed Professor Popov the map of the Cutliero Plan. All three sides in the Bosnian conflict had signed the plan on March 18, 1992 – before the war broke out – Alija Izebegovic, the leader of the Bosnian Muslims regrettably withdrew his signature on March 25, 1992 provoking the war.
The map clearly showed that Bosnia was to be a single state divided into cantons. Popov remarked that it was impossible to establish any sort of Greater Serbia under this plan, because the cantons that had a Serb majority were not even bordering one another.
Popov said that it would have been completely illogical for Radovan Karadzic to sign the Cutliero Plan, and for Slobodan Milosevic to support the plan, if either of them had any ambitions to make a “greater Serbia.”
Milosevic also showed the map of the Vance-Owen plan. Professor Popov noted that Milosevic supported that plan, and in the plan the Serbian areas were not linked-up, making “greater Serbia” impossible under that plan too.
After Milosevic concluded his examination of the witness, Mr. Nice embarked on his cross-examination. Mr. Nice did not deal very much with the actual content of the expert report, instead Mr. Nice focused his attention on a petition that the witness had signed calling for the ICTY to drop the charges against Radovan Karadzic.
Mr. Nice became unusually animated during the cross-examination. He shouted like a mad man, and feigned righteous indignation, at Professor Popov’s claim that Audrey Budding, the expert witness of the prosecution, had issued a “pseudo-scientific” report that relied on faulty scientific methodology.
Mr. Nice will continue his cross-examination tomorrow, assuming that his irritation with the witness doesn’t give him a stroke first. After Professor Popov concludes his evidence, SANU member Kosta Mihajlovic will be called to testify. He is one of the authors of the famous 1986 SANU Memorandum.
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