Bosnian Serb pleads not guilty

The former president of the Bosnian Serb Republic, Biljana Plavsic, has appeared before the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague saying she's innocent of crimes against humanity.

As the judge read out the counts against her -- of genocide, complicity in genocide, extermination and murder -- Mrs Plavsic answered not guilty to each one.

The charges arise from the time, in the early nineteen nineties, when Mrs Plavsic was a close ally of the indicted Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic.

Between July 1991 and December 1992, Mrs Plavsic, along with other members of the Serbian Democratic party, is charged with supervising the ethnic cleansing of Muslims and Croats from towns and cities across northern and eastern Bosnia.

The charges concern forty-two municipalities where thousands of people were killed and many more forced to flee their homes.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service