Hearings in genocide dispute between Croatia, Serbia start

BELGRADE – The International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague met to hear oral arguments in a dispute between Croatia and Serbia on mutual genocide suits at 10 a.m. Monday.

The hearing was opened by Peter Tomka, a Slovakian judge and current ICJ president, who today who gave the floor to the Croatian legal team, headed by Vesna Crnic-Grotic, professor of international law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Rijeka.

Croatia is currently presenting its oral argument and Serbia’s legal team will present their a week later, on March 10.

The dispute began with Croatia filing genocide charges against Serbia in 1999, to which Serbia answered with a counter-claim 10 years later.

The hearings will close on April 1 and over the year, ICJ judges should issue a judgment that will determine if Croatia and/or Serbia are guilty of a commission of genocide, incitement to commit genocide or complicity in genocide in Croatia between 1991 and 1995.

“The Court is not deciding war crimes or crimes against humanity, nor these crimes, if the Court finds they have been committed, may be a subject of this dispute,” Slavoljub Caric, head of the Department for International Legal Affairs at the Serbian Foreign Ministry, has told Tanjug.

He said that the Court should determine whether genocide was committed, and, if so, whether its commission or failure to prevent its taking place can be directly linked to the state administrations of the two countries.

“Only if a judgment says that a country is responsible for genocide can the issue of compensation for damages be raised,” said Caric.

The public hearings should be the final stage in the proceedings launched by Croatia in 1999, in the...