PARIS - Radovan Karadzic faced a judge Friday for the second time since his arrest and quickly seized the chance to demonstrate his defense strategy.

After his first month in the custody of the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, was back in court, seeming more relaxed, and evidently fully engaged with the proceedings against him. He refused to enter pleas to all 11 charges against him and dismissed the tribunal as a "court of NATO" disguised as a court of the international community.

But, acting as his own defense lawyer, he has already fired off lengthy motions, letters and requests in recent days. He wants copies of warrants to search his former home, copies of orders to freeze his assets, and answers to his challenge of the court's jurisdiction. He has demanded to know whether NATO or the United States intended to kill him, as he has claimed.

The hearing Friday was one of a series of steps leading up to his trial on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes during the Bosnian war between 1992 and 1995.

Prosecutors will seek to prove that as political leader and commander in chief of a Bosnian Serb ministate, he bears the legal responsibility for some of the greatest atrocities of the Balkan wars. They include a massacre in Srebrenica, where close to 8,000 unarmed men and boys were executed in 1995; and the three-year siege of Sarajevo, which left 10,000 civilians dead.

After Karadzic refused to plead, Iain Bonomy, the Scottish judge in charge, told Karadzic that in keeping with court rules he would enter for all 11 charges the words "not guilty."

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