THE HAGUE (AFP) –
Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic announced Thursday he will boycott the start of his genocide trial next week complaining he has not been given enough time to prepare.

Karadzic, 64, faces life imprisonment on 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity for his actions as Bosnian Serb president during the 1992-95 Bosnia war that claimed an estimated 100,000 lives.

The trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) starts next Monday. But Karadzic claimed it was being rushed in a written submission to the court released Thursday.

"I hereby inform you that my defence is not ready for my trial that is supposed to begin as scheduled, on the 26th of October, and that therefore I shall not appear before you on that date," he said.

Karadzic made his latest pronouncement as Sweden said that another former Bosnian Serb president, Biljana Plavsic, will be freed from prison in Sweden on October 27, following an ICTY decision to grant her early release from her sentence ordered for persecuting Croats and Muslims.

Karadzic, who denies all the charges against him and insists on conducting his own defence, complained of "unequal, disproportionate and unjust circumstances" in preparing his case.

"No lawyer in this world could prepare a defence within this period of time," he asserted.

"This trial, being the most gigantic, should have been given at least the average time for preparation, which is almost two years."

Court spokeswoman Nerma Jelacic said the trial would start as scheduled.

"The trial hearing in the case of Radovan Karadzic will proceed on Monday, 26 October at 09:00 in Courtroom 1 as previously scheduled," she said in a statement.

The judges are expected to decide at that time the next steps in the proceedings.

A heavily-bearded Karadzic was arrested on a Belgrade bus in July 2008, posing as an alternative healer, after 13 years on the run.

He is accused of being one of the masterminds of a plan to "permanently remove" Bosnian Muslims and Croats from Serb-claimed territory in Bosnia-Hercegovina.

Along with his military henchman Ratko Mladic, who is still at large, he is especially blamed for the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that left 10,000 people dead and the July 1995 massacre of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica.

Prosecution spokeswoman Olga Kavran said the team was "ready to start the trial".

"The most important thing is that the trial will take place, if it is not Monday, it will be later."

Karadzic has filed several requests to delay his trial, saying in September he needed 10 more months to study a million pages of prosecution evidence and the statements of hundreds of witnesses.

"My entering the proceedings under such circumstances would be my only crime, for which I would deserve contempt of all victims of the war and a curse of the generations to come," said his letter to the court.

Several other accused have boycotted their ICTY trials, though never with forewarning.

One of them, ultra-nationalist Serb leader Vojislav Seselj, refused to leave his cell for the November 2006 opening of his trial in November 2006, which was eventually delayed by a year.

Ex-Serb intelligence chief Jovica Stanisic was absent from the start of his trial on March 17, 2008, for reasons of ill health. His trial only started this June.

In Sweden, Plavsic, 79, was sentenced in February 2003 to 11 years behind bars for her role in a campaign of persecution against Croats and Muslims in the Bosnian war.

She is the highest ranking official of the former Yugoslavia to have acknowledged responsibility for atrocities.

WASHINGTON – Health insurers insist they're still committed to getting a health care overhaul bill passed this year. But all around Washington, people are wondering if — or when — the industry will change its mind and try to kill it.
The industry's chief lobbyist, Karen Ignagni, said Thursday that insurers "can continue to make a major contribution" to the overhaul effort. She told a gathering of the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans: "Yes, we can achieve reform."
But her comments came in the midst of mounting tensions between her industry and majority Democrats and on the heels of months in which President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders have painted insurers as a chief villain in the health overhaul effort.
"They want us where they've put us right now, which is as an enemy," Steven Champlin, a former House Democratic aide-turned-lobbyist advising the insurance group, told those at Thursday's conference. Even so, he added, "You have to stay focused on being part of the process and part of the solution."
Some in Washington, though, are not sure the insurance industry will stay on that path much longer. They argue that Democrats' nonstop attacks make it obvious the industry has already been carved out of the legislative process — unlike the pharmaceutical industry, hospitals and doctors, with whom lawmakers are working.
Insurers must decide whether to continue bargaining "or whether they are going to fight in the trenches for what they think is right," said Robert Rusbuldt, who as president of the independent insurance agents' trade group has clashed at times with insurance companies. "That is not an easy decision. Some scars have been opened on both sides, and you can make an argument that it doesn't make sense to go back to the negotiating table."
Insurers are unhappy because they say the Senate Finance Committee version of the legislation doesn't compel people strongly enough to buy insurance — a key tradeoff for the industry's agreement to sell policies to those who are already sick. It also objects to billions in new taxes on insurers.
The industry released two reports earlier this month saying families' insurance costs would rise under provisions of a version of health overhaul drawn up by the Finance committee. Ignagni's group also aired a TV ad in six states saying older peoples' benefits under Medicare Advantage, a privately administered form of the program, would be threatened.
Firing back, Democrats have begun pushing legislation through Congress erasing insurers' federal antitrust exemption. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Thursday she'll include the provision in her chamber's health overhaul bill, which she and other Democratic leaders are still crafting.
The industry's rhetoric in Washington, such as Ignagni's remarks on Thursday, is "accommodating," said Ron Pollack, who heads the liberal Families USA. "But outside the Beltway, where substantial resources are being spent, those resources are clearly undermining getting health care reform this year."
Should the insurance industry opt for a broader attack, it would not take long to launch a TV ad campaign.
"I'm sure they have contingency plans," said Evan Tracey, president of the Campaign Media Analysis Group of Arlington, Va., which monitors political advertising. "I think they can bring all the resources they would need to bring to bear to have a really big footprint, as far as media goes."
Of the $130 million spent so far this year on TV ads in the health care fight, just $3 million has come from insurance groups, Tracey said.
In contrast, $27 million has been spent so far attacking the insurance industry, he said, by labor, progressive and other groups. Continuing that theme, several hundred demonstrators marched in front of the hotel where the insurers were holding their convention Thursday, chanting and carrying signs such as, "Big Insurance, Sick of It."
Several lobbyists, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid risking their relationship with the insurance group, said they understood it was considering a TV ad campaign costing $100 million or more — a huge sum. The insurers' spokesman, Robert Zirkelbach, said "we know absolutely nothing" about such an effort.
Scott Styles, the insurance group's senior vice president for federal lobbying, said if needed the insurance association could team with other business organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has criticized many aspects of Democrats' health effort and has several insurance companies as members.
But it will likely be harder for the insurance industry to find business allies this year than it was in 1993 and 1994, when the insurers — allied with other health care providers and business groups — helped kill then-President Bill Clinton's health revamping effort.
This year, providers like drug companies and hospitals have been working for an overhaul after reaching agreements with the White House and Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., to limit the cuts imposed on their industries.

BELGRADE (AFP) –
Representatives of Bosnian Serb parties on Friday met Serbia's President Boris Tadic in Belgrade ahead of talks aimed at strengthening Bosnia's central government, an official from his cabinet said.

The meeting, confirmed to AFP by the official, lasted for several hours until late on Friday although no statement was released.

According to Beta news agency, which quoted a source close to the participants, Tadic told Bosnian Serb leaders that Serbia would not interfere into the negotiations on Bosnia's future led by US and EU officials.

Leaders from Bosnia's Serb, Muslim and Croat communities met in Sarajevo on October 9 at a summit organised by the European Union and Washington and further talks are scheduled for October 20.

Both Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, whose country currently holds the EU presidency, and US Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg chaired last week's meeting.

On Friday Tadic "indirectly told the (Bosnian Serb) officials that he expected them to reach a compromise with representatives of the other two nations (Muslim and Croatian one) in Bosnia that would enable the country's further progress towards EU membership," the same source said.

Prior to the meeting, Tadic said it was "an opportunity to discuss an initiative in Butmir that should be decisive for Bosnia's European integration."

Earlier, Bosnian-Serb premier Milorad Dodik told Srna news agency he would present "his party's position" to Tadic on the European Union's and Washington's wish to see stronger central institutions in Bosnia.

"Dodik was likely to refuse proposals expected to be offered by US and EU officials," Beta's source said after the meeting.

Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, sparked by ethnic tensions surrounding its break from the former Yugoslavia, left at least 100,000 people dead and more than two million homeless.

Under the Dayton peace accords that ended the war, Bosnia has since consisted of two semi-independent entities -- the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation -- linked with weak central institutions.

In a bid to make the country more functional and bring it closer to Europe the international community has been insisting on strengthening the central institutions at the expense of the ethnic entities and reforming the constitution.

The dispute underlines deep divisions over how to organise the country, with Serbs insisting on retaining autonomy while Muslims and Croats favour a stronger central government.

LOS ANGELES – Larry Birkhead, who gained fame in a custody battle over Anna Nicole Smith's daughter, was due to testify in the preliminary hearing for two doctors and the man who once fought him for custody of little Dannielynn.
Howard K. Stern, the boyfriend-lawyer who claimed he was the baby's father, lost that battle when Birkhead proved by DNA evidence that the little girl was his. Now Stern sits in the defendant's chair before a judge who will decide if he and the two doctors must stand trial in Smith's drug overdose death.
Dr. Khristine Eroshevich, Dr. Sandeep Kapoor and Stern are not charged with killing her but with conspiring to illegally provide her with controlled substances.
In testimony by Smith's former bodyguard, Stern was portrayed as a devoted companion to the celebrity model who went through a "commitment ceremony" with her five months before she died.
Witness Maurice Brighthaupt said he was present at the ceremony on a boat off the Bahamas on Sept. 28, 2006, the same month that Smith gave birth to her baby and saw her only son Daniel die.
"It was a unification through the eyes of God is how they put it," Brighthaupt said.
But Brighthaupt also offered damaging testimony against both Stern and Eroshevich saying he witnessed them injecting Smith with medication. It was the first time he has made such an allegation and Stern's attorney Steve Sadow attacked his account as false. He showed that Brighthaupt had given different stories to cable TV outlets after Smith's death in return for payments of $150,000 for his interviews.
Brighthaupt, who spent two full days on the witness stand, was to wind up his testimony Friday morning before Birkhead was due on the witness stand.
He has not commented on Birkhead's role in Smith's life except to say that he was with Smith in May of 2004 when she met Birkhead at the Kentucky Derby and began dating him.
Sadow indicated outside court he was looking forward to Birkhead's testimony.
"I think Larry's going to do his best to tell the truth," said Sadow. "If he does, he'll be very helpful to Howard."
Under Sadow's cross-examination, Brighthaupt said that many of the things he told his TV interviewers were lies, crafted to protect Smith's reputation. Among them was his statement that he never saw her take illicit drugs and never saw the drug methadone in her house. He also said then that Smith was in control of everything including decisions about her medication. He said now that was a lie.
"I had a lot of time to think about everything I said in the past and I'm trying to rectify everything now," he said.
He also acknowledged he had tried to sell a book on the case but the publisher rejected his manuscript calling it "too boring."
Thursday's court session was marked by Superior Court Judge Robert J. Perry's decision to bar the prosecution from inquiring about an alleged sexual relationship between Smith and Eroshevich who had been her longtime psychiatrist and friend.
"This is a preliminary hearing," Perry told the prosecutors. "It's not a trial. It's to determine if there's probable cause for a trial. I'm just not going to turn this into some circus sideshow."
Perry said the issue could be raised again at trial before another judge, who could then rule on its relevance.
Outside court, attorney Adam Braun, who represents Eroshevich, called the sexual allegation a distraction and said the judge made the right call in barring the testimony.

Search warrants executed in the case and released a few weeks ago described photos of Smith and Eroshevich in a bathtub in a sexual situation.

Brighthaupt offered no testimony against Kapoor and said he had not heard of him. Kapoor's lawyer asked him no questions.

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Associated Press writer Anthony McCartney contributed to this report.