Former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic will appear before the United Nations war crimes court in The Hague Friday when he is asked to make pleas to charges of genocide and war crimes.

Karadzic, 63, refused to make pleas when he first appeared at the court on July 31. If he refuses again Friday, the court will automatically enter not guilty pleas.

Last week, judge Fausto Pocar, president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), shifted the Karadzic case from Trial Chamber One to Trial Chamber Three presided over by Jamaican judge Patrick Robinson.

Pocar said the decision was based on "trial management and case distribution needs".

The move came two days after Karadzic sent a letter to Pocar requesting a change of judges. Karadzic claimed that Dutch judge Alphonse Orie, who leads Trial Chamber One, is biased and can not guarantee a fair trial.

The three judges who will now hear the Karadzic case are Robinson, British judge Iain Bonomy and French judge Michele Picard. Bonomy was assigned to oversee the pre-trial proceedings.

Both Bonomy and Robinson served as judges in the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The lengthy trial ended in March 2006, months before the court was to deliver a verdict, when Milosevic died of a heart attack in the United Nations detention center in The Hague.

Karadzic faces 11 counts of charges, including genocide, war crimes and crime against humanity. The prosecutors accused him of masterminding atrocities including the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and the deadly 44-month siege of Sarajevo during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.

If convicted, Karadzic will face a maximum life sentence.

Karadzic, who has said he wants to defend himself, last week asked the hearings to be held in the Serbian language instead of English. He said his English is not good enough to defend himself properly.

But the ICTY Wednesday turned down his request, saying it is too much work to translate the whole testimony into Serbian.

During the past month, Karadzic filed several motions to the court in which he repeatedly voiced disbelief that he could ever get a truly fair trial.

He stressed that the case against him is illegal because former United States assistant secretary of state Richard Holbrooke promised him immunity from the court in return for his withdrawal from public life. Holbrooke was the chief broker of the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995.

Holbrooke has denied the existence of such a deal.

Karadzic was arrested last month in Serbia after 13 years on the run. The Serbian government was under enormous pressure from the European Union to bring Karadzic, one of the few ICTY indictees still at large, before the court. Brussels has refused to start serious accession talks with Belgrade until the latter "fully cooperates with the ICTY".

(Xinhua News Agency August 29, 2008)