Milosevic Is Scolded After TV Interview

Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was warned Friday that he could lose jail privileges after he gave an unauthorized interview to Fox television.

Fox said Milosevic initiated the interview by calling from a telephone just outside his cell at the U.N. detention unit in The Hague, where he is awaiting trial for alleged war crimes against ethnic Albanians in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo in 1999.

“We found out that he had spoken with a journalist in violation with the rules of detention, and he has been warned that if there was to be a repetition that it could result in a withdrawal of all privileges,” said Jim Landale, spokesman for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

Fox said in an e-mail that Milosevic was surrounded by guards during the phone call but that they did not intervene.

Landale said he could not confirm the circumstances of the call. He said Milosevic claimed he was unaware he had broken any rules.

Landale said Milosevic could forfeit his communications privileges, except with an attorney present. Detainees are normally free to buy prepaid phone cards.

Milosevic is known to frequently call family, supporters and leaders of his party.

According to a transcript of the interview, Milosevic denied that forces belonging to Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia, had systematically committed war crimes.

“There are individual crimes, but there was clear order that any crime has to be punished immediately and whoever did it have to be arrested,” he said.