Serb surrenders to U.N. war crimes tribunal

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- A Serbian ultranationalist leader who once visited Saddam Hussein surrendered to the U.N. war crimes tribunal Monday and pledged a vigorous defense against allegations that his troops committed atrocities during the Balkan wars.

Vojislav Seselj, a close ally of former President Slobodan Milosevic who has been on trial in the Hague for more than a year, took a commercial Yugoslav Airlines flight to Amsterdam, where he was detained by plainclothes policemen and driven off in an unmarked van.

Seselj, known for a fierce temper and scathing anti-Western remarks, said he would defend himself against the charges "with a greater vigor than Milosevic." Seselj faces charges that his paramilitary troops committed atrocities during wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

Milosevic has also been defending himself at the tribunal, but the court is expected to face even stronger nationalist outbursts during Seselj's trial.

Seselj, who caused a stir by visiting Saddam in 2001, said he surrendered "in order to destroy the evil tribunal, an American instrument against the Serbs."

"I'm going to The Hague to defend the dignity of my 10,000 fighters who fought gallantly during the wars," Seselj told The Associated Press on his flight from Belgrade to Amsterdam. "They never committed any crimes and I'm going to prove it."

The 48-year-old leader of the Serbian Radical Party, the biggest opposition group in the Serbian parliament, is accused of 14 crimes against humanity and violations of laws and customs of war between August 1991 and September 1993 in Croatia, Bosnia and the northern Serbian province of Vojvodina.

Although he is not directly linked to any murders, his paramilitary troops known as "Chetniks" are alleged to have committed "violent extermination and expulsion" of non-Serbs from the regions of former Yugoslavia to create Greater Serbia that would include large chunks of Bosnia and Croatia.

Prosecution spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said Seselj's decision to turn himself in was "a good one and other indictees at large should follow his example."

But at Belgrade airport, Seselj asked his followers to remain committed to Serb nationalist goals and not to allow the hand over of top suspects Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and army commander Ratko Mladic.

"The most important thing is that I be the last Serb who goes to The Hague," he told hundreds of cheering supporters.

After Milosevic's ouster in October 2000, Seselj slowly sneaked back into the public eye, playing on Serbia's economic and social troubles to gain popularity.

In the last Serbian presidential elections in December -- the third he has participated since the mid-1990s -- Seselj won about 1 million votes, or about a third of the electorate.

What remained as Yugoslavia was abolished and replaced this month by Serbia and Montenegro, a loose coalition of its two remaining states.