Serb ultras blame US over hunger strike leader

BELGRADE, Dec 2 (Reuters) About 30,000 Serbs protested in front of the United States embassy today in defence of Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj, now 22 days into a hunger strike at The Hague's war crimes tribunal.

The ultranationalist Radicals, bussed in from all over the country for the demonstration, accused Washington and the United Nations of seeking to kill Seselj, who has been in detention for nearly four years following his surrender to answer charges of war crimes .

Speakers said the US government was anti-Serbian. One likened Seselj to Nelson Mandela and called him ''the world's leading anti-globalist''.

''Vojislav Seselj 22 days ago began his last and hardest fight against injustice and humiliation, and he is ready to pay with his life,'' said the party's deputy leader Tomislav Nikolic.

Seselj, 52, has lost 19 kg since he began refusing food, according to Serbian media reports. The Radicals, Serbia's strongest party, have been campaigning for days for Seselj's ''rights in detention'' and now say he is close to death.

His trial in The Hague was adjourned indefinitely yesterday The Radical Party accuses the US of ''jeopardising Seselj's life'' and says the UN tribunal is biased against Serbs and acts on US instructions. It denies its campaign is tailored to improve its January 21 general election prospects.

Protesters wore t-shirts describing the Hague tribunal as a ''Mass grave for Serbs'' and carried pictures of top fugitives Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serbs wanted for genocide but honoured as heroes by the ultranationalists.

Banners likened the US and NATO to the Nazi regime.

Washington led NATO bombing of Serbia in a 78-day campaign in 1999 to force the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo and halt the killing of civilians in a counter-insurgency war.

Seselj stopped eating after the court decided to assign him a defence lawyer against his wishes. He was transferred to hospital for monitoring on Wednesday.

Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica wrote to tribunal president Fausto Pocar yesterday asking him to try to prevent ''irremediable consequences'' for Seselj's health.

The tribunal adjourned the case. ''The trial chamber cannot exclude that the medical condition of the accused will deteriorate to such a degree where, even if he would wish to do so, the accused would be unable to instruct assigned counsel.'' The prosecution had been due to start next week.

Seselj surrendered to The Hague in 2003 to answer charges of war crimes against non-Serbs in the 1990s and plotting crimes with the late President Slobodan Milosevic, who died in detention in March.

He pleaded not guilty and routinely disrupted pre-trial proceedings, insulting judges and calling his assigned lawyers ''spies'' and ''actors posing as lawyers''.

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