PARIS, Aug 6 (AFP) - Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic accused Western governments of putting pressure on judges at his war crimes trial, in an unauthorised interview from his Netherlands prison that has drawn protest from the UN court.
Milosevic gave the interview to a journalist from the French daily Le Figaro, despite the UN court's strict rules that defendants should not speak to the media.
The paper said it was conducted in the office he is using to conduct his own defence, which it said is equipped with a telephone, fax machine and a computer but not Internet.
Milosevic, who was dressed in sandals and without a tie, told the paper "the judges of the court had received instructions from Western governments who have sworn to ruin me."
"This trial has been hatched by the NATO powers," said Milosevic, who apparently gave the interview in "near-perfect English" to the French paper, presenting himself as the victim of a "political trial".
He claimed that the Srebrenica massacre, where 7,000 Muslim men and boys were slain by Serb forces in 1995, "was an immense strategic error of the Bosnian Serbs, with whom I was having a very bad relationship at the time".
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague said the French journalist Roland Girard had snuck in to see Milosevic under false pretences.
"Renaud Girard was not admitted into the detention ward as a journalist. He was admitted on condition that no article would come out of it," court spokesman Christian Chartier told AFP.
"It is regrettable that such a publication would give the impression that we accord privileges to some members of the media, which is not the case."
In his interview, Milosevic said that the fugitive wartime Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, who faces charges from the court including genocide for his role in Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, was not responsible for the Srebenica massacre, seen as one of the greatest atrocities in Europe since World War II.
"I do not think that he could order such a thing that goes against Serbian military honour like executing prisoners of war. It's true that he was seen in Srebrenica on the televsion pictures... but I think that he left and the murders were not a result of his actions."
Despite continuing health problems Milosevic has been doggedly conducting his own defence against more than 60 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the 1990s wars in the Balkans.
The wearying task has clearly taken its toll, and the trial has been delayed over a dozen times as Milosevic has fallen ill.