LAUNCHING his defence against war crimes charges, Slobodan Milosevic today justified his actions in Kosovo as a "struggle against terrorism."

He said he was a victim of twisted facts and "terrible fabrication".

On the third day of his trial in The Hague, the former Yugoslav leader finally had a chance to respond to a two-day recital of horrors by the prosecution.

Milosevic, the first head of state called to justice before an international tribunal, began with a sharp attack against the Nato bombing of Kosovo, a relentless 78 day operation in 1999 that forced Yugoslav forces to abandon the drive against ethnic Albanians rebelling against his regime.

On the third day of his trial in The Hague, the former Yugoslav leader finally had a chance to respond to an exhaustive two day recital of horrors by the prosecution in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

He was accused of masterminding a ruthless campaign of murder and expulsion in the Balkans in his quest to create a "Greater Serbia."

Milosevic spoke with animation, pointing his finger and thumping his desk, in an address that appeared directed as much toward the television audience in Serbia as toward the three international judges trying him.

Despite the prosecution denials, he said the case was not against him alone but against the whole Serbian people. "Our citizens stand accused, citizens who lent their massive support to me," he said. "My conduct was an expression of the will of the people," he said.

Milosevic began with the war in Kosovo, the first of three indictments against him. He rejected as "a terrible fabrication" accusations that Serb military forces expelled hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians, and said they in fact fled from the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Nato bombing.

"When people were fleeing from these places of conflict, this is called deportation," he said. "They want to make me accountable for the crimes they perpetrated themselves," he said.

"The struggle against terrorism in the heart of one's own country, in one's own home, is considered to be a crime," he said. "our defence was a heroic defence against the aggression of the Nato pact."

His presentation, expected to take at least a day, opened with the screening of a video asserting that the western intervention was contrived and "concocted," and that there had been no human disaster in Kosovo, as claimed by the west, until the bombing began.

The video, a documentary prepared by the German ARD television, claimed Serbs were massacred in Kosovo, and that the Nato campaign was "a violation of international law in which innocent civilians lost their lives."

The western intervention in Kosovo was built on lies, according to the video. "Facts were turned upside down." It purported to show western propaganda was designed to solidify public opinion behind the campaign, especially in Germany.

Milosevic called the video "a tiny atom of truth in an ocean of lies."

Prosecutors say he was responsible for the deportation of millions of non-Serbs and the killing of hundreds of thousands more during the wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, in a crass and brutal campaign to entrench his own personal power.

Milosevic, 60, faces a total of 66 counts of genocide and other war crimes during a decade of strife in the republics that once made up Yugoslavia. Each count carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

His case is the most prominent war crimes trial since military tribunals tried the leaders of Nazi Germany and Japan after the Second World War.

AP