Accused Bosnian war criminal Radovan Karadzic opened his defense today at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at The Hague today, claiming that he was a "tolerant man" who had done "everything within human power to avoid the war and to reduce the human suffering."

Mr. Karadzic is on trial for 10 counts of genocide and crimes against humanity, including the 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica. But reading from a personal statement on Tuesday, the former Serbian leader told the court that "Instead of being accused for the events in our civil war, I should have been rewarded for all the good things I've done,"