Belgrade  - Serbian politicians and media on Friday vehemently criticise the United Nations war crimes tribunal over the sentencing it handed to officials from Slobodan Milosevic's regime for a campaign of terror they commanded against Kosovo Albanians a decade ago.

The court cleared the former Serbian president Milan Milutinovic, but sentenced the ex-Yugoslav deputy premier Nikola Sainovic and four army and police generals to between 15 and 22 years in prison.

"The Hague rapes Serbia again" and "Another Hague injustice" are the typical headlines in the tabloid press, along with the more moderate "Draconian sentences for the generals, Milutinovic cleared" or "Former state leadership a century in prison" in other dailies.

Serbian officials appear particularly embittered because the court earlier acquitted a Kosovo Albanian rebel chief-turned politician, Ramush Haradinaj, whom Belgrade accused of atrocities during the 1998-99 insurgency and war in the province then under Belgrade's control.

"The verdict is disproportional to what they were charged for, particularly when considering the (clearing) verdict for Ramush Haradinaj," Prime Minister Mirko Cvetkovic said.

His deputy and Interior Minister Ivica Dacic, now the leader of Milosevic's Socialist Party and former comrade of the men convicted by The Hague tribunal on Thursday, said the proceedings were "a political process from the start."

Milosevic himself died five years ago in his Hague prison cell, while on trial for crimes committed by forces under his command in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

He passed away before the verdict stage of the trial, so Thursday's sentences were the first handed to Belgrade leaders for the brutal campaign against the majority Albanians in Kosovo.

The Serbian minister in charge of cooperation with the UN tribunal, Rasim Ljajic, estimated that latest verdicts would fuel the already prominent animosity of Serbs toward The Hague.

"The first and natural reaction will be a comparison with the acquittal of Ramush Haradinaj ... it will cement (the) belief that The Hague tribunal applies double standards and issues political verdicts," Ljajic said.

Many Serbs see the UN court as an instrument of political pressure on their country in the hands of Western powers.

Serbian aspirations to membership of the EU remain blocked over its reluctance to bring to justice the Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, accused by The Hague tribunal for genocide over atrocities such as the 1995 slaughter of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica. (dpa)