Karadzic due for plea hearing at Hague tribunal

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic is being asked for a second time on Friday to enter a plea at a U.N. tribunal for charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Karadzic refused to enter a plea at his first hearing a month ago and instead challenged the court's legitimacy, which he is likely to do again judging from his filings with the tribunal.

In his latest submission, Karadzic called the tribunal a "bastardized judicial system", saying it was biased towards finding him guilty and repeating his allegation that the United States was seeking to liquidate him.

The charges against Karadzic, 63, include two of genocide over the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica.

Arrested in July in Belgrade with a flowing beard and long hair that disguised him while he worked as an alternative healer, Karadzic appeared for his first pre-trial hearing shorn of the beard and dressed somberly in a dark suit.

If Karadzic, who has decided to represent himself, does not enter a plea, a not guilty plea will be entered on his behalf, according to the rules of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia.

Preparations for the trial, expected to start next year, will begin after Friday's hearing. Prosecutors are expected to update the court on whether they will amend his 11-count indictment.

Karadzic has demanded that former U.S. peace mediator Richard Holbrooke and ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright appear at the tribunal.

At the first hearing after he was extradited to The Hague, he argued that under a secret deal forged more than a decade ago Holbrooke offered him immunity from prosecution if he disappeared after the war.

Karadzic says Holbrooke reneged on the deal and now wants him dead, a claim that the former diplomat has denied repeatedly before and after Karadzic's arrest last month.

Legal experts have drawn parallels between Karadzic's behavior and that of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic after he was brought to The Hague in 2001 to face war crimes and genocide charges.

Karadzic would probably try to delay the start of the trial and use it as a platform to give his own views of the conflict, said Andre de Hoogh, an international law lecturer at Groningen University.

At the same time, U.N. prosecutors and judges will seek a speedy trial to avoid lengthy proceeding like the Milosevic trial, which lasted four years and had nearly 300 witnesses before the former Yugoslav leader died in jail in 2006 before the trial could end.

(Reporting by Reed Stevenson and Aaron Gray-Block; Editing by Angus MacSwan)