Milosevic to face single trial

Milosevic has remained defiant at previous hearings

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (CNN) -- Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic will face a single trial for alleged war crimes in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia.

An appeals panel at the War Crimes Tribunal ruled on Friday that all charges against Milosevic should be combined, and the trial is due to begin on February 12.

Prosecutors argued for the single trial because they wanted to show a pattern that threaded through the Balkan wars which led to the break-up of Yugoslavia.

Court spokesman Jim Landale told Reuters news agency: "The appeals chamber has unanimously decided on a joinder. The trial will start on February 12."

A text of the judgement was not immediately available.

RESOURCES In-Depth: Case against Milosevic

Chief U.N. prosecutor Carla Del Ponte on Wednesday asked the appellate bench sitting in The Hague, Netherlands, to reconsider the war crimes tribunal's original refusal to hold a single trial on three indictments.

She told the appeals panel Milosevic's plan to create a greater Serbia lay at the heart of all his alleged crimes during the Balkan wars.

"They are one strategy, one scheme" to create a greater Serbia by "forced and violent expulsion of the non-Serbian population," Del Ponte argued.

Milosevic is accused of war crimes including mass killings and expulsions in Kosovo in 1998 to1999 and crimes against humanity and genocide in Croatia in 1991 and Bosnia in 1992 to 1995.

Milosevic is expected to represent himself in court

The prosecution told the appeal hearing it planned to call several figures from the Milosevic regime, and argued that some would not be able to return to The Hague to testify more once if the trials were held separately.

"Typically, they are high-level witnesses who can give direct evidence of what he was doing," said deputy prosecutor Geoffrey Nice.

Dozens of witnesses are expected to be called in a trial forecast to last about a year.

Lawyers working with Milosevic have said the defendant intends to announce his witness list, and that he plans to call leaders of NATO countries during the Kosovo conflict.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook are among those Milosevic intends to call to testify.

Milosevic, 60, has said he will represent himself in court and has refused to enter pleas. The court has entered pleas of innocent on his behalf to all counts.

On Wednesday he defended his actions during the Balkan wars and asked to be freed, promising he would return to face trial.

Milosevic faces a total of 66 charges of war crimes after being ousted from power in Yugoslavia in 2000 and brought to The Hague for trial last June. He could face life imprisonment if found guilty of any charge.

He was accused of 32 counts of war crimes in Croatia and five in Kosovo, but the Bosnia indictment is the only one to include genocide, the most serious war crime in the statute books.