Serbia Announces Countersuit Against Croatia

Belgrade _ Serbia's Foreign Minister says Belgrade will file a countersuit against Croatia for war crimes after the International Court of Justice ruled it can hear Zagreb's 'Genocide case.'

Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremic told state-owned television RTS on Tuesday night that a countersuit would be filed before the International Court of Justice against Croatia for alleged war-crimes committed against ethnic Serbs in 1995’s Operation Storm offensive.

With its genocide suit against Serbia, Croatia has failed to accept the “hand of reconciliation” offered by Serbia to “leave the past behind and focus on the common European future” of both countries, Jeremic said.

The United Nations' highest court ruled on Tuesday that it can hear a Croatian lawsuit filed against Serbia for genocide during the war in the early 1990s, which Serbia claimed the International Court of Justice had no jurisdiction over. Read more: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/main/news/14880/

Jeremic said that despite Serbia’s desire to keep up good relations with its neighbours, it would also do its best to shed light on the ethnic cleansing of 250,000 Serbs from Croatia’s territory in 1995.

“Let the truth be confirmed before the historical court and court of justice,” Jeremic told RTS.

Croatia filed its suit in 1999, claiming Belgrade had a hand in the creation of an ethnic Serb breakaway state in Croatia in 1991 and the displacement of thousands of Croats from the area, dubbed the Republic of Serb Krajina, after Zagreb declared independence from Yugoslavia.

Belgrade had argued that the International Court of Justice has no authority in the case, since the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was not a member of the UN in 1999, and subsequently had not signed the Convention of Genocide, which Croatia’s suit claims had been violated by Belgrade.

However the court ruled that Belgrade had in fact recognised its jurisdiction when responding to suits filed against it by Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia in the 1990s, and with the launching its own suit against NATO alliance member-states in response to the 1999 allied bombing of Yugoslavia.

Belgrade is expected to have at least one year to prepare its defence against the Croatian suit, for which the trial is not expected to commence for at least two years.

Serbia’s legal representative Tibor Varadi told local media earlier that Serbia’s legal team has been preparing its defence and countersuit in parallel over the last eight years, and would soon be ready to file its suit to the International Court of Justice for Croatia’s alleged war crimes against ethnic Serbs in its 1995 military intervention to retake the Krajina region.