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SERBIA: CONCERN AHEAD OF HAGUE COURT RULING ON BOSNIAN GENOCIDE SUIT Belgrade, 23 Feb. (AKI) - There is concern in Belgrade ahead of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the Hague's ruling on Monday in a Bosnian suit against Serbia for allegedly committing genocide during Bosnia's 1992-1995 civil war. The sentiments have been summed up by Serbia's ambassador to the Netherlands, Radoslav Stojanovic, who has defended his nation's case before the ICJ. "If Serbia were convicted of genocide, it would have far reaching consequences which would burden our future for decades," he told Belgrade radio station B92. The Bosnian Muslim government initiated the suit in 1993 - with mention of 100 billion dollars of war damages compensation sought from Belgrade - but Bosnian Serbs, the second biggest ethnic group in Bosnia-Herzogovina, have dismissed the suit saying it wasn't agreed with the "competent state organs". The Serbian government initially gave little consideration to the case following the ICJ's 2003 that it, as a tribunal, wasn’t competent to try Serbia’s suit against NATO for the alliance's bombing of Serbian in 1999 during the Kosovo crisis. The ICJ motivated its ruling on the basis that the the Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) wasn’t a member of the United Nations in 1999, because its membership was frozen under international sanctions in 1992. However, Serbia and Montenegro’s UN membership was reactivated after the fall of president Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and the ICJ ruled that it could therefore try the Bosnian suit. The charges of genocide stem from when Bosnian Muslims, together with the ethnic Croats minority voted in a referendum for Bosnia’s independence after the dissolution of the former Yugoslav federation, triggering a Serb rebellion. At least 100,000 people were killed in the ensuing war, during which Bosnian Serbs were armed and helped by the Belgrade-commanded, Yugoslav army. Bosnian Muslims claim that the then Yugoslavia, of which Serbia is the successor, carried out an aggression and ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs. Over 100 Serbs have been indicted for war crimes in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia’s southern Kosovo province by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and several of them have been convicted for genocide relating to 1996 Srebrenica massacre when some 8,000 Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serb forces. By a strange twist of irony, Bosnian Serbs would also be the beneficiaries if Bosnia won the war damages, political analysts noted. Belgrade daily Blic reported recently it had learned that the ICJ would acknowledge that crimes had been committed by Serbs, but wouldn’t convict Serbia. "The International Court of Justice will say that crimes against Muslims and Croats were undoubtedly committed by Serbs, but will reject the Bosnian suit for lack of evidence that genocide was committed on a state level,” the paper said quoting unnamed sources. "If Bosnia was to win this case, then the entire Serbian population can pack up and leave the country, because there would be no life here for decades, commented Belgrade daily Glas javnosti. "Whatever the court may rule, Bosnia and Herzegovina vs. Serbia and Montenegro is a historic case. For the first time, a state asked the court to hold another state responsible for genocide under the Genocide Convention," said US-based campaign group Human Rights Watch. +++ ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> See what's inside the new Yahoo! 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