DAR AL HARB / ISLAM - BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA: NO GENOCIDE IS THE RULING, CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION

Muslim anger as UN clears Serbia of genocide
By Alex Spillius

The United Nations' highest court today cleared Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide during the Balkans war of the 1990s, but blamed it for failing to stop the massacre at Srebrenica, the single worst incident of the conflict.

Fourteen years after the Bosnian government issued a writ for genocide against its counterpart in Belgrade, the president of the International Court of Justice in The Hague spent nearly three hours reading out a judgment that dismayed Bosnian Muslims.

The ICJ's British president Rosalyn Higgins said the judges concluded by 13 votes to 2 that the slaughter of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in July 1995 was an act of genocide, but that the Serbian state could not be shown to have had the deliberate intention to "destroy in whole or in part" the Bosnian Muslim population – a critical element in the 1948 Genocide Convention.

In the first case where an entire nation was being held to judicial account for genocide, the judges found that Serbia, though it supported the Bosnian Serbs, fell short of having effective control over the Bosnian army and the paramilitary units that carried out the massacre.
It also rejected Bosnia's claim for monetary reparation.

"Financial compensation is not the appropriate form of reparation for the breach of the obligation to prevent genocide," the judgment said.

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Bosnian Muslims call for change of Bosnia's constitution after World Court ruling

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Bosnia's constitution should be rewritten to abolish the division of the country into a Croat-Muslim federation and a Bosnian-Serb state, the Muslim member of the country's three-member presidency said Monday.

Haris Silajdzic argued that Monday's World Court ruling in The Hague, which cleared Serbia of genocide in the 1992-95 Bosnian war, meant that genocide had been committed by the Bosnian Serbs.

The court in The Hague, Netherlands, ruled that Serbia, while not responsible for genocide during the war, had failed to prevent the genocidal slaughter of about 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica in July 1995. It also said Serbia failed to comply with its obligations to punish those who carried out the killings after Bosnian Serb army captured the U.N. enclave, and ordered Belgrade to hand over suspects for trial by a separate U.N. court.

Silajdzic, in an effort to use the verdict to achieve his long-standing goal of abolishing the division of Bosnia, argued that this was an indication that the Bosnian Serbs committed genocide in general during the war, and that therefore the country's division into two states was the product of a crime.

"The results of genocide are visible on ill institutions of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which because of this crime has lost its multiethnic character," he said in a statement.

"The current constitution is a direct product of genocide since it is based on ethnic and territorial principles established by genocide and as such, it has to be annulled," the statement said.

Bosnia's war ended in 1995 with a peace agreement which divided the country into a Muslim-Croat federation and a Bosnian-Serb mini-state, known as Republika Srpska. Each of the three ethnicity's has a representative in the country's three-member presidency.

The Bosnian Serbs want to preserve the division, while many Bosnian Croats and Muslims want to see the country united.

In Banja Luka, where the Republika Srpska is based, officials called for further dialogue.

"I call on all in Bosnia-Herzegovina to stop feeding tensions but rather to focus on how we will proceed," said the Prime Minister of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik. He said only individuals are responsible for what happened in Srebrenica.


Pertinent Links:

1) Muslim anger as UN clears Serbia of genocide

2) Bosnian Muslims call for change of Bosnia's constitution after World Court ruling