"Nikolić not subject of trial before ICJ"

(Beta, file)

"Nikolić not subject of trial before ICJ"

ZAGREB -- Vesna Pusić says there was "no talk in any sense of the word" at the International Court of Justice about the current Serbian authorities' involvement in wars.

"What was being talked about was only the attitude towards these events of some people currently in power in Serbia," the Croatian foreign minister told a news conference, Hina reported.

She added that the subject of the case before the ICJ - i.e., Croatia's lawsuit, and Serbia's counter-lawsuit on genocide charges - "was not the possible involvement of Serbian President Tomislav Nikolić in the war events of the 1990s'".

''It is important to emphasize that this is about clearing up and deciding on some very tragic and, in our opinion, dramatic events of the 1990s,'' she continued.

Pusić reiterated that the job of politicians was to pursue policies "of today and tomorrow," and leave it to the court to "clear up the policies of the 1990s."

At the beginning of public hearings before the ICJ on Monday, head of the legal team of Croatia Vesna Crnić-Grotić, among other things, stated that Croatia did not drop its lawsuit, "although it wanted to negotiate that", because political leaders in Serbia were holding on to the attitude of denial of crimes.

In this context, she noted that in a recent interview the president of Serbia, Tomislav Nikolić, "denied the genocide in Srebrenica (Bosnia)", despite the ruling of the court, which found that the genocide occurred - without, however, stating that Serbia itself was responsible.

Nikolić, Crnić-Grotić added, also did not publicly denounce his "connection" with Vojislav Šešelj, "nor with paramilitary

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