The first witness has been called at the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. Mahmut Bakalli, the top Communist Party official in Kosovo from 1970 to 1981, took the stand in the Hague on Monday after Milosevic finished his opening defence statement. "In the spring of 1998 I met the accused twice," Bakalli told the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia. Milosevic is accused of genocide in Bosnia's 1992-95 war and of crimes against humanity in Croatia in 1991 and in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo in 1998-99. In his opening statement, which he began last week, Milosevic reiterated the unfairness of the tribunal and blamed the West for the war crimes in the Balkans. On Monday, he accused outside powers of inciting the civil wars in Bosnia and Croatia.

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