Karadzic tries to blame Bosnia war on Muslims

In his opening defence statement at the United Nations war crimes tribunal at the Hague, Karadzic denied any intention to carry out ethnic cleansing and said the objective was to protect lives and property during the violent 1990s break-up of the former Yugoslavia.

The Serb "cause is just and holy," Karadzic said as he began his two-day statement.

Karadzic, 64, faces two counts of genocide and nine other counts of murder, extermination, persecution, forced deportation and the seizing of 200 UN hostages. He faces possible life imprisonment if convicted.

Prosecutors say he orchestrated a campaign to destroy the Muslim and Croat communities in eastern Bosnia to create an ethnically pure Serbian state.

It included the 44-month siege of the capital of Sarajevo and the torture and murder of hundreds of prisoners in detention camps.

That violence culminated in the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men and youths in one week in July 1995 at Srebrenica.

Karadzic tried to trace the origin of Bosnia's civil war to Muslim rejection of power-sharing. A core group of Muslim leaders in Bosnia "wanted Islamic fundamentalism and they wanted it from 1991," he said.