THE HAGUE, Feb. 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Slobodan Milosevic told his war crimes trial Friday that former U.S. president Bill Clinton had ordered the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade because he wanted to "go down in history."

Milosevic, who has unleashed a rambling and combative counter-attack by blaming NATO for war crimes in the war on Yugoslavia, said the order for the May 7 bombing, which killed three people at the embassy, came straight from the White House, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

"It is quite clear that the attack was launched directly from the United States," Milosevic told the court trying him for genocide and crimes against humanity over the 1990s wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo.

"Clinton wanted to go down in history as the first man to have bombed Chinese territory by bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. This was no accident," Milosevic said.

NATO apologized for what it said was a "tragic mistake," which it blamed on an outdated map used in error while planning the 78-day air campaign against federal Yugoslavia.

However, the British daily newspaper, The Observer, reported in October 1999 that the bombing was indeed ordered, because NATO had learned the embassy was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications.

The report, citing senior U.S. and European sources, as well as NATO officers, said the Chinese were also believed to be allegedly monitoring U.S. cruise missile attacks on Belgrade in order to develop ways of countering the weapons.

Meanwhile, Milosevic said earlier Friday he wanted to call Clinton and other Western politicians to testify at his trial for war crimes at The Hague, BBC's online news service reported.

Milosevic, who is conducting his own defense, said he also wanted to question British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Germany's former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright among others. He has already said he wanted French President Jacques Chirac to testify.

Milosevic is allowed to call whoever he likes and the court has the power to subpoena them. But the judges do have to be persuaded that their testimony will be relevant.

The thrust of his argument, as on Thursday, is that NATO itself is to blame for the deportation and killing of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in 1999.

During his arguments on Friday, the ex-Yugoslav leader also said his forces had intercepted radio communication between the NATO Command Center and the pilots in Kosovo in May 1999.

He said that when a pilot reported one of his targets was a convoy of civilian tractors, he was told: "Carry out your orders."

"This entire war was pointless and it constitutes a crime," Milosevic said on NATO's 1999 air war against Yugoslavia. "Those who come to kill children who are asleep can hardly sleep peacefully themselves if they are human at all. All the laws of international law and the statutes of NATO were infringed upon."

Accusing NATO of targeting civilians in 1999, he said, "They were targeting peasants plowing their fields outside their village. They targeted a bus full of passengers. The bus was hit with a direct strike and cut in two... the bus was targeted by NATO, killing so many civilians, on the 3rd of May."

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