After that, the prosecutors will be given an hour to respond to the defence teams' arguments and after them, the lawyers for the generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac will have one hour total for their rejoinder.

The presentation of closing arguments at the Hague-based tribunal is scheduled to be taking place from Monday to Thursday afternoon.

After that, the trial chamber is expected to adjourn to deliberate on a verdict.

In their final submission in July, the prosecutors in the case called on the trial chamber to find the three generals guilty of war crimes committed during and in the wake of Operation Storm, when Croatian forces retook central and southern Croatian areas from Serb rebels in August 1995.

The prosecution "recommend that the Chamber sentence Gotovina to 27 years' imprisonment, Markac to 23 years' imprisonment and Cermak to 17 years," reads the submission filed on 16 July.

The final submission delivered by Gotovina's team reads that the prosecutors failed to prove any count of the indictment and called on the UN court to acquit Gotovina.

According to the ICTY, the defence teams of the other two generals, too, insisted in their submissions on the innocence of Markac and Cermak. These documents, however, have not yet been made public.

The trial in this case commenced on 11 March 2008, with the last witness taking the stand on 11 June this year.

A total of 303 days were spent on the trial, with the prosecution calling a total of 81 witnesses to testify.

There were 25 witnesses testifying for Gotovina's defence, 19 for Cermak and 13 for Markac, according to the tribunal.

The ICTY trial chamber called an additional seven witnesses to testify in this case.

Some of the high-profile witnesses were the former UN Secretary-General's special envoy to former Yugoslavia, Yasushi Akashi, former Special Human Rights Rapporteur Elisabeth Rehn, former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith, the former Croatian Ambassador to the USA, Miomir Zuzul, as well as former Croatian government members, business people and army and police officials.

Serb civilians testified as well, with some of them enjoying protection of identity. There were several high-ranking officers of the Yugoslav People's Army and Serb paramilitaries among the witnesses.

The trial was also marked by an imbroglio regarding military documents which the prosecution demanded from Croatia, claiming that the material was of key importance for proving the defendants' guilt.

Croatia delivered some of the requested documents. The trial chamber put an end to this situation this July when it turned down the prosecution's motion that a subpoena be issued against Croatia over the alleged concealment of the requested documents. The trial chamber said it could not determine with sufficient certainty whether the documents which the prosecution had been seeking from Croatia for the past two years still existed.

Cermak and Markac have been at the ICTY's detention centre in Scheveningen since March 2004, when they voluntarily surrendered to Croatian authorities and were transferred to The Hague.

Gotovina was arrested in Spain in December 2005 and since then has been at the detention centre of the UN tribunal.

The Hague tribunal has indicted a total of 161 people in the area of the former Yugoslavia for war crimes, and proceedings against 124 people have been completed to date.