More than eight-thousand supporters of jailed former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic have rallied in Belgrade -- three days before the former leader goes on trial in The Hague on charges of genocide.

Leaders of Mr. Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party called for his release (Saturday), telling demonstrators his trial is an attack on all Serbian people.

But senior U.N. prosecutor Carla del Ponte says the trial is not about revenge or collective guilt. In an interview to be published Sunday in a German newspaper (Welt am Sonntag), Ms. del Ponte says the legal proceeding is about Mr. Milosevic's personal responsibility for crimes he is accused of committing.

The former president has been indicted for ordering massacres of non-Serbs in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo during the 1990s. He has refused to recognize the legality of the court, prompting judges to enter a plea of "not guilty" on his behalf.

Mr. Milosevic was forced from power by a popular uprising in October, 2000. Serbia delivered Mr. Milosevic to the U.N. war crimes tribunal at The Hague last June, under intense pressure from the United States and the European Union.

(Afp, AP)

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