(Adds prosecutor comments) By Anna Mudeva THE HAGUE, Jan 26 (Reuters) - The U.N.-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone has postponed the start of former Liberian President Charles Taylor's war crimes trial to June 4 to give the defence more time to prepare, the court said on Friday. The court had set April 2 as a tentative start date for the trial but defence lawyers requested more time, saying they would not be able to start before September due to a large amount of documents and work to be done. "We will start a trial on June 4 and we will not be ready but we will start because it's your order," Taylor's lawyer Karim Khan told a status conference. "The prosecution had five years (to prepare), we barely had five months". The court indicted Taylor in March 2003 on 17 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for stoking civil war in Sierra Leone through an illicit trade in guns for diamonds. The charges were condensed to 11 counts in March 2006 to ensure a more focused trial. Taylor was moved to The Hague in June 2006 due to fears a trial in Freetown could spur unrest in Sierra Leone or Liberia. The defence has said it faces difficulties preparing for trial due to a lack of office space and equipment in The Hague, which it said subjected the team to "intolerable" working conditions. The court said it is currently organising offices for the defence, which are expected to be ready in February. "12-18 MONTH TRIAL" The court's new prosecutor Stephen Rapp told a news conference he hoped the trial would be completed by 2008 as the Sierra Leone court had to rely on voluntary financial contributions and did not want to prolong its cases. "We have said a 12-18-month trial is our goal," Rapp said. Proceedings on the Taylor's care are being held in the premises of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is not involved in the trial. The U.N. Security Council authorised Taylor's transfer after Britain said it would jail him if he is found guilty. Taylor's rise to power in 1989 led to a 14-year, on-and-off civil war in Liberia that spilled across regional borders. He fled into exile in Nigeria in 2003 but was returned to Liberia and transferred to the court in Sierra Leone in March. The court turned down a defence request for a Sept. 3 start to the trial and the prosecutor's proposal for a July start, saying both dates would have led to undue delay of the trial given that Taylor has been in custody since February last year. Taylor is being held at a prison near The Hague, where suspects standing trial at the U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia are housed and where former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic died of a heart attack last year. Rapp said Taylor did not appear in court on Friday because he had a back problem which had to be treated. Taylor has complained about conditions in the jail. His lawyer has said Taylor could not make phone calls as freely as he could in Freetown, lockdown hours were "far more draconian" and he was unhappy about the food in the "rather Eurocentric" facility.
