UN ruling delays Croat general's war crimes trial
(Corrects to show tribunal's appeals chamber upheld, not dismissed, ruling on conflict of interest)
AMSTERDAM, June 29 (Reuters) - The U.N. war crime tribunal's appeals chamber on Friday upheld a decision which disqualified lawyers for Croatian war crime suspect Ivan Cermak from his case, further delaying his trial along with two others.
Croatian General Ante Gotovina, Cermak, a former colonel general, and Mladen Markac, a former commander of the Croat special police, are on trial at the tribunal.
They are accused of a joint criminal enterprise that aimed to permanently remove the Serb population from the Krajina region by force, persecution, displacement, deportation and the destruction of property in 1995.
Earlier this year, the tribunal's trial chamber had ordered Cermak's lawyers to stop representing him because of conflicts of interest as his lawyers also represented Rahim Ademi, a former Croatian general, now on trial in Croatia.
Gotovina has said he plans to call Ademi, who was his second-in-command, as a witness.
The appeals chamber said the trial of the three war crimes suspects is not likely to start within the next six months as Cermak searches for new defence counsel.
Gotovina was the last wanted war crimes suspect from the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia and his arrest has helped eased Zagreb's path to eventually joining the European Union.
