Prosecutors are being told to speed up the Radovan Karadzic trial by dropping some of the charges against the alleged war criminal.
 
Judges at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia say they will scrap charges themselves if the prosecution doesn't take action to streamline the case against the former Bosnian Serb leader.
 
Chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz intends to bring 11 charges against Karadzic but the judges say this is too many. Prosecutors are also being asked to indicate which of the 500 proposed witnesses can be scrapped. 
 
Superfluous witnesses
Karadzic is accused of genocide committed after the collapse of the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, and war crimes during the siege of Sarajevo between 1992 and 1995.
 
The prosecutors will now have to present the court with a written document showing how the trial can be settled more quickly. They will have to indicate which witnesses are superfluous and which indictments can be dropped.
 
This is not the first time the judges have urged the prosecution to reduce the charge sheet. Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz, however, has to date been unwilling to meet their demands.
 
The U.N. court was initially meant to finish all trials by 2008 and appeals by 2010. But it has recently suggested that its will only conclude its final Karadzic trial early 2012, while appeals may run into 2013.
 
Iain Bonomy, judge in the Karadzic trial, also served as judge during the trial against the ex-president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic. Milosevic died in the fifth year of his trial, before the tribunal had reached its verdict. One of the reasons the legal proceedings took so long was the elaborate list of charges. Many experts regard the Milosovic as an example of how not to administer international criminal justice.
 
DNA tests
Prosecutors charge Karadzic with masterminding the mass murder at Srebrenica, that left around 8,000 people dead, and the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that cost the lives of 10,000 people. Bonomy suggested earlier that the court may not be able to "do" both Sarajevo and Srebrenica.
 
Also on Thursday, Karadzic said during a preliminary hearing that he wants DNA tests to prove that the death toll of the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995 has been exaggerated. A "correct list of victims", he said, would be "thousands" below the official figure of around 8,000.
 
Karadzic stands trail on charges of genocide, complicity in genocide, extermination, murder, wilful killing, persecutions, deportations, inhumane acts and other crimes during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war that left an estimated 100,000 people dead.