THE HAGUE, July 14 (Reuters) The United Nations war crimes tribunali sentenced a Bosnian Serb to a 20-year.prison term today for his part in an "ethnic eleansing" campaign against Muslim civilians during the Bosnian war, in 1992.

Dusan Tadic, 41, a former police reservist. and bar owner, was sentencied to, a total of 97 years on 11 counts of crimes, against humanity and war crimes, but the sentences will run concurrently with the longest single term. He was convicted on May 7.

Mr. Tadi received the heaviest sentence, of 20,years, under an umbrella persecution charge covering beatings, torture and the murder of two Bosnian Muslim police officers during the early stages of the 1992-95 war.

The sentencing was the first, after la full-length trial since the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yug6slavia was established by the United Nations Security Council in May I993.

The, trials has set legal precedents that are espected to affect future cases at The Hague and beyond. Prosecutors said it was also significant because I it brought about judicial recognition of the Bosnian Serbs' policy of "ethnic cleansing" in which large numbers of Bosnian Muslims and Croats were killed or forced to flee areas captured bv the Serbs.

"You committed these crimes with intention and with sadistic brutality using knives, iron bars, the butt a pistol, sticks," said the presiding Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald of the United States, "in one case tightening a noose aroun the victim's neck until he lost consciousness."

The judge said that Mr. Tadic showed a pattern, of cruel and brutal conduct against his Muslim former friends and neighbors during a purge by Serb nationalist forces of Muslim and Croat inhabitants of the Prijedor area of northwestern Bosnia

The court's decision drew an angry response from Bosnia, where it was condemned as a political act and a sham.

"This is a political sentence," Momcilo Krajisnik, the Serb memher of Bosnia's postwar multi-ethnic presidency, said in Banja Luka, the largest city controlled by the Bosnian Serbs.

Mr. Tadic has spent three years in custody since his arrest in Germany. He has denied the charges, and his lawyers have appealed his convictions.

Brothor Defends Tadic

By MIKE O'CONNOR

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 14 - This morning as Ljubo Tadic ot the news that his brother had been sentenced to 20 years in prison for war crimes, he proclaimed his brother's innocence.

Like many other Bosnian Serbs, he continued to express his support for the nationalists who led them during the war in Bosnia and who continue to say they are the only ones who can protect the Bosnian Serbs from an unjust vengeful world.

"The court and the prosecutors, know my brother is, innocent," he said. "They are persecuting him, for political risons. Probably they are being paid by some Islamic countries,to do this."'

Standing behind one of dozens of stalls at a market where he sells cassettes, rubber balls and shampoo, Mr Tadic did not fault the Bosnian Serb leaders for the state of the economy.

Almost all foreign aid has been denied to the Bosnian Serbs because their leaders have refused to honor aspects of the peace agreement, reducmg many people to paupers.

"The world is against us and they will not help us no matter what we do," he said.,

'Despite Mr. Tadic's defiance, some -of those in the market and across the half of Bosnia controlled by Bosnian Serb authorities are turning their anger on the handful of what they consider to be corrupt

politicians',

, After a war in which Serbian na'tionilism was@ personified by this same group of politicians, a choice to oppose them now is difficult.

Dusan Tadic is viewed by many here as simply a small cog in a big mabhine that was trying to create a sanctuary for the Serbian people.

Biljana Plavsic, the president of the Serbian part of Bosnia today, reasserted her defense of the Bosni' an Serb people by condemning Mr. Tadic's sentence. "It is something terrible, horrible," she said.

Even so, the sentence seems to -give a stronger hand to the politiclans whom Ms. Pl,avsic is opposing, represented by Mr. Krajisnik.

A European diplomat this evening described the viewpoint of those who support the hard-line leaders this

way, "The wartime leaders ' tell the people that in fact the war is really

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