Belgrade, Yugoslavia ? Barely 2 miles from the apartment houses that mark the northwest limits of this capital lies a training compound for elite police forces where last summer workers unearthed the bodies of scores of ethnic Albanians killed in the province of Kosovo.

The mass grave brought the ugly side of the Balkan wars close to home for many Serbs, the people of Yugoslavia’s dominant republic. But after the initial revelation, political leaders and citizens seemed to want nothing more than to drop the uncomfortable subject. And that sentiment is at risk of deepening as the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic opens Tuesday before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

“Every single person I talk to here is very strongly against the Hague tribunal,” said Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco, a human-rights lawyer who supports the tribunal’s work. “People start out by saying, ‘Yes, we have to condemn all war criminals,’ that Srbrenica was very bad, it was a crime, but … but … but … .’ Always ‘but,”‘ she said.

Srbrenica, a town in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was the site of the most brutal event of the Bosnian war: the massacre over three days of an estimated 7,000 Muslim men and boys by Serbian forces.

“Serbs cannot believe their countrymen did these things, so there is sort of a collective denial going on,” said Bratislav Grubacic, a political analyst in Belgrade.

Historic trial

Despite the Serbian opposition, the trial of Milosevic will be a historic event. For the first time, a former head of state will be called to account for war crimes, including genocide.

The trial will consolidate the three indictments brought against Milosevic so that the charges can be presented together. However, evidence from Kosovo will be heard first, followed by evidence from the wars in Bosnia and Croatia.

In connection with Kosovo, the tribunal prosecutor charged Milosevic with crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war. The charges involving Croatia include violations of the Geneva Convention, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war. Only the indictment involving Bosnia includes the charge of genocide.

If found guilty, Milosevic would face life imprisonment, since the tribunal does not use the death penalty.

Paul Williams, a law professor at American University in Washington, D.C., who worked at the State Department in the early 1990s, helped set up the tribunal. According to Williams, the tribunal has three main goals: to create an accurate historical record, to deter future leaders from allowing war crimes and to make the individuals responsible for the Balkans crimes answer for them in order to spare the society collective guilt.

Milosevic has sought to undermine the tribunal’s mission in ways that play to a longtime Serbian sense of victimhood and of achieving heroism through grand defeats. Among his first public statements was that the tribunal is “a false tribunal” with no authority to put him on trial. It is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that ought to be tried for war crimes, he said, since civilians were killed when the alliance’s forces bombed Serbia during the war in Kosovo.

‘Yugoslavia on trial’

The Hague tribunal and prosecutor Carla Del Ponte have said repeatedly that this is a trial of Milosevic alone, not of the Serbian people. But both because Milosevic’s basic policies are being called into question and because there has been little explanation of the purpose of The Hague tribunal by the current government, people in Serbia find it easy to believe that they stand accused along with Milosevic. That view is being actively promoted by many prominent Serbs, including several lawyers who are acting as informal advisers to Milosevic.

“In the trial that starts on Feb. 12, Yugoslavia is on trial, Serbia is on trial,” said Zdenko Tomanovic, a Belgrade attorney who recently visited Milosevic and who gave a news conference last week.

From pensioners to university students, there appears to be considerable support here for Milosevic’s approach, along with a hardening of views toward The Hague and the West.

“It is obvious that this is a political court, and it’s obvious now that everything is fabricated and it’s mostly fabricated against the Serbian people,” citizen Dragan Petrovic, 77, said recently while reading the newspaper and chatting with friends.

“I support Milosevic in everything he is doing in The Hague. He is a superb patriot. He’s defending the Serbian nation, not himself,” added Petrovic, who said he likes Milosevic far more now than when he was president.