Kosovo report 'links Milosevic directly to ethnic cleansing'

A detailed report has linked Slobodan Milosevic directly to widespread atrocities in Kosovo in 1999, just two days before the former Yugoslav president faces his accusers at the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague.

The 593-page report from Human Rights Watch accuses Mr Milosevic and his inner circle of political and military leaders, some of whom remain in office, of responsibility for the savage ethnic cleansing of the Albanian population.

However the document also reports human rights violations both by the Kosovo Liberation Army and by Nato. It says the alliance's bombs killed about 500 Yugoslavs between March and June 1999 and it accuses Nato of taking insufficient steps to minimise casualties.

The use of about 1,500 cluster bombs during its bombardment is also criticised for posing a "serious and disproportionate danger to the civilian population".

But the main focus of the report is the catalogue of murder and rape which took place in the province and about which, the authors conclude, the Serb leadership was well aware.

Human Rights Watch said it interviewed more than 600 victims and witnesses for the report, which includes case studies of atrocities in dozens of villages. The New York-based group said it had documented 3,453 killings by government forces but the toll was certainly higher. One separate study has concluded that 12,000 ethnic Albanians were killed in 1998-9, another says 10,500 died between March and June 1999.

The dossier argues that the killings were carefully planned and implemented operations "that fit into the [Belgrade] government's strategic aims".

Mr Milosevic was handed over to the tribunal in The Hague earlier this year after intense international pressure. On Monday he will face an updated indictment for crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war committed in Kosovo.

The chief prosecutor of the tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, has also said she intends to level genocide charges against Mr Milosevic for atrocities committed in Bosnia.