Radovan Karadzic told judges trying him for genocide yesterday that wartime atrocities blamed on Bosnian Serbs were "staged" by their Muslim enemies and said the 1995 Srebrenica massacre was a "myth".

The Bosnian Serb wartime leader was granted another trial delay after concluding a two-day opening statement in which he told judges his people's role in the 1992-95 war had been demonised.

Bosnian Muslims had "planted" corpses, exaggerated death tolls and killed their own people as part of a dirty tricks campaign against Serbs, he told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

"It is a myth," he said of the 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys captured after the fall of the Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves, over which he is charged with genocide.

Referring to "false victims" of Srebrenica, he said: "Of course the death of a single person is significant, but then why exaggerate?"

Mr Karadzic, 64, said "there weren't any civilian casualties" in two infamous bombings of a Sarajevo market that killed dozens in 1994 and 1995.

The attacks on the Markale market were blamed on the Bosnian Serb army.

"You see that it was staged. Perhaps it was corpses that were planted throughout," he told the court.

UN representatives knew about a tactic involving the "planting of bodies throughout Sarajevo with a view to accusing the Serb side for that," asserted the ex-president of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb state Republika Srpska.

Mr Karadzic, who is conducting his own defence on 11 counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, said Serbs had sought to avoid the 1992-95 Bosnian war that killed 100,000 people and displaced 2.2 million, and were merely reacting to Muslim aggression.

"The Serbs' hand was forced. We have to react to what they do otherwise we would go down the drain."

"Wherever the SDA (Muslim) army trod there was nothing left alive."

He also claimed that Bosnian Muslim fighters attacked their own people in the capital of Sarajevo to "draw in NATO and western countries into the war on their side."

"We can prove that they did shell their own people."

Mr Karadzic is charged with terror over the 44-month siege of Sarajevo that ended in November 1995 with some 10,000 people killed.

Having boycotted the start of his trial in October last year, Mr Karadzic took the stand on Monday to respond to charges that he commanded an "ethnic cleansing" campaign of Croats and Muslims during the Bosnian war, plotting with late Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic to create a "Greater Serbia".

"The forcible removal of Bosnian Muslims or Croats was never our plan," he said.

"We said that we always wanted to live together with the Muslims, we entreated them to remain in Yugoslavia, but we couldn't agree to come under a Muslim fundamentalist regime in Bosnia."

At the end of his statement, the court indefinitely delayed the start of witness testimony, scheduled for today, while appeal judges decide on a request by Mr Karadzic for the trial to be delayed until June.

The court could not say how long this would take or when the trial was likely to resume.

Mr Karadzic told the court he was not afraid of trial and was preparing "with great enthusiasm".

But he warned that "lies" about the Serbs' role in the war were dangerous for the future of the country.

"Whoever believes this... saying that the Serbs did something that they never did, whoever does that ensures the continuation of future conflict and slaughter."

Arrested on a Belgrade bus in July 2008 after 13 years on the run, Mr Karadzic has pleaded not guilty. He risks life imprisonment.