The Hague, Netherlands ? Two former Yugoslav presidents faced off Wednesday at a U.N. war crimes tribunal, with Slobodan Milosevic arguing at his genocide trial that Stipe Mesic was the real criminal.

Milosevic, conducting his own defense, seized the chance to turn the tables on Mesic, who testified a day earlier that Milosevic intentionally broke apart Yugoslavia in the early 1990s to create a “Greater Serbia.”

“You betrayed Yugoslavia, you contributed to its dissolution,” Milosevic told Mesic during his cross-examination of the first head of state to testify in his trial.

Mesic, 67, was the last president of a united Yugoslavia in 1991 and is now president of Croatia.

In a development in another courtroom that could impact Milosevic’s case, a Bosnian Serb political leader indicted for war crimes unexpectedly pleaded guilty to persecuting non-Serbs Wednesday.

Biljana Plavsic, a close associate of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, changed her plea for one count of crimes against humanity. In exchange, prosecutors dropped seven other charges, including genocide.

As a wartime leader in Bosnia, it is thought that Plavsic might have evidence tying Milosevic to war crimes there.

Plavsic’s lawyers said Wednesday that her plea bargain did not include an agreement to testify against Milosevic, although they didn’t rule out the possibility.

At Milosevic’s trial, Mesic testified for prosecutors that he had been powerless to stop Milosevic then president of Serbia from taking control of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army in 1991. Mesic said Milosevic then methodically set about purging non-Serbs from Serb-dominated areas within Bosnia and Croatia in 1991-1995.

“The army did what Milosevic’s regime asked of it, which was to create a ‘Greater Serbia’,” Mesic said.

Milosevic rejected Mesic’s arguments. “If I had had control of the Yugoslav army, Yugoslavia would not have fallen apart, but sadly that was not the case,” he said.

Mesic conceded he wanted a gradual loosening of ties within the federation, but he said Milosevic was ready to spill blood to enforce his vision of a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia.

“We all took part in the destruction of Yugoslavia,” Mesic said.

“I thought it was better to negotiate for ten years than to fight for 10 days. But some were in favor of war and certainly Milosevic was one of those.”

Milosevic became president of Yugoslavia in 1997, though by then the only republics remaining in the federation were Serbia and Montenegro. He was ousted from power in 2000 and later transferred to the U.N. detention unit near The Hague.