Milosevic shuns British lawyer brought in to ensure trial is fair

When he enters court on Tuesday at the start of the biggest war crimes trial since Nuremberg, Slobodan Milosevic will refuse to exchange even the most basic of greetings with the Briton chosen to safeguard his right to a fair hearing.

Steven Kay is one of three lawyers whose job it is to ensure there is a fair trial for the former Yugoslav president, who has refused to appoint a defence counsel and rejects the authority of the United Nations tribunal. How Mr Kay and his two colleagues handle their task may affect the outcome of the trial, and could decide whether such key international witnesses as Tony Blair, Bill Clinton and Javier Solana are called to testify.

But the London barrister will not expect the thanks of the accused, from whom he has not so far extracted a single word. Each time they meet in court, says Mr Kay, "I give him a smile and a nod and say 'Hello'. There is never any reply."

Not since the victors of the Second World War imposed justice on the vanquished has there been such an important war crimes trial. Mr Milosevic is the first ever former head of state to face an international criminal trial and the first serving leader to be indicted. The charges include genocide – the most serious accusation in the UN tribunal's locker – and carry a life sentence.

By conducting his own defence, Mr Milosevic has ensured he will have ample time to make his views known. He is likely to spend the whole of the second day of this week's trial speaking.

The tribunal's answer to the inevitable accusation of a show trial was to appoint Mr Kay, along with lawyers from the Netherlands and Serbia, as amici curiae (friends of the court) – neutral observers who can challenge the prosecution and cross-examine witnesses. They do not take instructions from the defendant, but may develop lines of argument from things he says. And if Mr Milosevic argues (as sources in Belgrade suggest) that Messrs Blair and Clinton should be called, the amici curiae say they are ready to try to persuade the judges to agree.

The charges against Mr Milosevic relate to atrocities in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia. Nine days ago the prosecution had an important boost when judges agreed to join the three trials together. That was a relief for the prosecution, because it was not proving easy to persuade witnesses to come from Belgrade to testify once, let alone two or three times.

On one level the charges relating to Kosovo should be the easiest to prove. The province was (and remains) part of Yugoslavia, of which Mr Milosevic was president when ethnic cleansing took place. Proving command responsibility ought to be simple compared with the difficulties of linking Mr Milosevic directly to crimes in Bosnia and Croatia.

On the other hand Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, has already achieved convictions against others for genocide at Srebrenica, and has established in other trials what took place there. She does not have to start from scratch, as she does over Kosovo.

According to Michail Wladimiroff, another amicus curiae, there are crucial differences between this trial and Nuremberg, not the least of which is that this tribunal is set up under UN auspices. Another element is that "the Germans had a track record for documenting everything". This week the prosecution case will be more a question of assembling "circumstantial evidence" from witnesses rather than pieces of paper.

Can all this result in a fair trial? Professor Wladimiroff says he hopes that people conclude that it was fair. But Mr Kay is not so upbeat. "It remains to be seen," he said.