VARIOUS: Serbia cleared of genocide, failed to stop killing. Serbian leaders welcome the news of the top U.N. court verdict.

The highest U.N. court cleared Serbia on Monday of direct responsibility for genocide in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war but said Belgrade had violated its obligation to prevent and punish the mass killing. In Sarajevo Haris Silajdzic member of Bosnian tripartite government said the presidency expects Serbia and Montenegro to take full responsibility for their involvement in Bosnian war. Serb leaders welcomed the verdict and called for reconciliation with other sides in the Bosnian conflict. The highest U.N. court cleared the Serbian state on Monday (February 26) of direct responsibility for genocide in Bosnia during the 1992-95 war, but said Serbia had violated its responsibility to prevent genocide. Bosnia had asked the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to rule on whether Serbia committed genocide through the incidence of killing, rape and ethnic cleansing during the Bosnian war. In The Hague, where the ICJ sits, its president, Judge Rosalyn Higgins said on Monday that the court concluded that the Srebrenica massacre did constitute genocide, but that other mass killings of Bosnian Muslims did not. But she said the court ruled that the Serbian state could not be held directly responsible for genocide, so paying reparations to Bosnia would be inappropriate even though Serbia had failed to prevent genocide and punish the perpetrators. Some 8,000 Muslims from Srebrenica and surrounding villages in eastern Bosnia were killed in July 1995. The bodies of about half of them have been found in more than 80 mass graves nearby. Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic, both accused of genocide over Srebrenica, are still on the run. The ICJ court case represented the first time a state had been tried for genocide, which was outlawed in a U.N. convention in 1948 after the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews. A judgment in Bosnia's favour could have allowed it to seek billions of dollars of compensation from Serbia. Bosnian Muslims and Croats expressed disappointment at the ruling over the war in which at least 100,000 people died, three quarters of them Muslims and Croats. Speaking in Sarajevo Haris Silajdzic member of Bosnian tripartite presidency said the presidency still expects Serbia and Montenegro to take full responsibility for their involvement in Bosnian war. "Well we have expected full responsibility of Serbia and Montenegro but still Serbia and Montenegro are guilty because they have violated the convention on genocide, prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide. So these are the first country's in the history that had been pronounced guilty of the violating the convention on genocide", Silajdzic said. Serbian President Boris Tadic on Monday urged the parliament of Serbia to condemn the 1995 Bosnian Serb massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica. "It is very important that the parliament as soon as possible adopts a declaration which will clearly condemn the crime committed in the region of Srebrenica. That would make possible the opening of a new page in relations between Bosnia and Serbia, building new trust between the citizens of the two states," Tadic said at the news conference. He added: "It is perfectly clear that anyone who opposes the completion of cooperation with the Hague tribunal and the adoption of a parliamentary declaration on Srebrenica is working directly against the interests of their state and future of its citizens." Speaking at a news conference in Banja Luka on Monday (February 26), Prime Minister of Bosnia-Herzegovina's Serb Republic Milorad Dodik said the deaths in Srebrenica were a result of casualties of war. "Of course that it should be said, on behalf of the (Serb) Republic, President (of Serb Republic) is here as well, and on behalf of everyone to apologise to all who got killed in war and to their families, but we expect to be told the same by others, because many have been killed on our side as well and many suffer because of consequences of the war which was as it was", Dodik said. "I think that there was no genocide and that it was not planned and that it was not committed. There are numerous material facts that can prove it but I don't want to debate it now", he added. It is almost 14 years since Bosnia first sued the rump Yugoslav state from which it seceded in 1992, but the case has been repeatedly held up by arguments over jurisdiction. Bosnia's Muslims and Croats followed Slovenia and Croatia in breaking away from Yugoslavia in April 1992, against the wishes of Bosnian Serbs, who were left as a one-third minority in what had previously been a Yugoslav republic ruled from Belgrade. Backed by the Yugoslav army, the Serbs captured two-thirds of Bosnia and besieged Sarajevo. Tens of thousands of non-Serbs were killed and hundreds of thousands forced from their homes.

ITN Source | February 27, 2007

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