Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has said it is unimaginable he could get a fair trial at the UN war crimes tribunal because the world's media have already branded him a war criminal.
In a document submitted to the tribunal by Karadzic and published by the court today, Karadzic wrote: "My arrival here was accompanied by many drastic irregularities."
"The first irregularity I would mention is the media witch-hunt which began in the Muslim media even before the beginning of the armed conflict and which proclaimed me a war criminal at a time when the only victims were Serbs."
"The international media continued that media witch hunt ... so that is now unimaginable to many people that this court could acquit me. I believe that this fact seriously jeopardises the trial itself".
Meanwhile the former US peace mediator for Bosnia, Richard Holbrooke, has dismissed a claim by Karadzic that the United States had offered a deal that would spare him prosecution for war crimes.
Karadzic, who was arrested last week after 11 years on the run, appeared before a UN war crimes judge in The Hague for the first time to answer genocide charges for his role in the 1992-95 Bosnia war.
He told the court he had received an offer from Holbrooke on behalf of the US government under which Karadzic would withdraw from public life and take other steps and Washington would persuade prosecutors to drop the indictment against him.
Mr Holbrooke, reached by telephone in Washington, said there was "zero" truth to claims of a deal with Karadzic.
"This is an old charge that Karadzic started in 1996," he said. "Such a deal would have been immoral and unethical ... It obviously didn't happen."
The US State Department also denied Karadzic's claim.
"Ambassador Holbrooke and we have repeatedly made clear that no agreement was ever made in which Radovan Karadzic was provided immunity from prosecution or arrest," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a written statement,
Holbrooke said that, as a private citizen and special envoy of President Bill Clinton, he negotiated Karadzic's departure from office with then Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
"And in order to explain this to his own people, he put the story out then, and he has embroidered it over 12 years, but there is zero truth to it. I have testified to that account," Holbrooke said.
The former US diplomat also laughed off an attack by the 63-year-old Karadzic, who said: "If Holbrooke still wants my death and regrets there is no death sentence at this court, I want to know if his arm is long enough to reach me here."
Karadzic appeared to have misremembered a comment he had once made, said Holbrooke.
"What I said was that I know that The Hague does not have a death penalty, but if anybody deserves the death penalty, it's Radovan Karadzic because he was responsible, directly or indirectly, for 300,000 deaths," Holbrooke said.
"So if he is still afraid of me while he is in a well-padded cell in The Hague, I guess that's an indirect compliment in a way," added Holbrooke, who was the architect of the deal that ended the Bosnian war.