Former Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic has been given six days to respond to a prosecution request to split his case into two separate trials, by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

By Geraldine Coughlan in The Hague

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In a packed courtroom number three, the 69 year-old Mladic looked alert and well at the first procedural hearing on his pre-trial schedule, since he was arrested in May - despite his earlier complaints of poor health. The prosecution wants to split the indictment against Mladic in order to speed up his trial.

Two trials in one
Mladic's defence lawyer Branko Lukic was given until the end of August to respond to a prosecution motion asking the court to split the Mladic case into two separate trials: to first try Mladic for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, for which he is accused of genocide in the killing of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims. He would then later stand trial on charges linked to the 44-month siege of Bosnia's capital Sarajevo, for a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, and for holding UN peacekeepers hostage.

In the court application on 16 August, chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz said he wanted to take the case to trial quickly, partly because of "the need to plan for the contingency that Mladic's health could deteriorate."

Although the case would be split into two separate trials, the prosecutors said they considered both to be equally important, and only were looking for a practical approach that could deliver a verdict quickly and "maximise the prospect of justice for the victims."

Unsatisfactory
They said they would take roughly one year to present their evidence in the Srebrenica case alone. The defence would presumably have equal time.

The prosecutors argued that the second trial could then begin while an appeals court considers the outcome of the Srebrenica trial. Appeals are almost inevitable at the ICTY, with both the accused and the prosecution challenging judgements.

But Lukic told RNW that splitting the Mladic trial into two would be very difficult for a defence team to manage. "While the Srebrenica appeal would be going on, we would be also dealing with the Sarajevo trial. That would not be a satisfactory arrangement for us - but it's up to the judges to decide," he said.

In pressing for two Mladic trials instead of one, prosecutors are clearly mindful of the unfinished trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, whose case ground on for four years. It was repeatedly interrupted by crises of the defendant's health until he died of a heart attack in his jail cell just weeks short from the trial's scheduled conclusion.

Remove crime sites
As part of the pre-trial plan, Judge Alphons Orie told the prosecution to remove three crime sites and a number of incidents from the indictment against Mladic.

These have already been removed from the indictment against Mladic's former boss, Radovan Karadzic, in order to speed up his trial. Mladic and Karadzic were indicted together as part of a joint criminal enterprise (JCE) responsible for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in 1995.

But they are being tried separately under the amended indictments. As Mladic has refused to plead to the charges against him, the court entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf.