Serbia: No evidence about plan for genocide against Croats

THE HAGUE - Serbia's legal representative William Schabas has underscored in the continuation of the dispute between the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague that Croatia did not present any evidence about the existence of a plan by the Serbian authorities to commit genocide against Croats during the war in 1991.

Schabas said that the grave crimes committed against Croats at the time could be characterized, at worst, as the crimes against humanity but without genocidal intent to destroy Croats as an ethnic group.

Referring to Croatia's allegation that the genocidal intent by the Serbian authorities and forces could be inferred from the statements by Milan Paroski and Vojislav Seselj, Schabas said that in 1991 they were marginal politicians in the opposition, and not in power in Belgrade.

Contrary to that, the statements by the then Croatian president Franjo Tudjman, during the meeting with top military officials on the Brijuni Islands, ahead of Operation Storm in August 1995, constitute a solid example of the direct evidence of the genocidal intent.

According to the evidence that the Serbian legal team delivered to the court, Tudjman said in that meeting that such a blow should be delivered to Serbs so that they disappear from Kninska Krajina (the Serb-majority area in Croatia at the time).

Tudjman's words proved that Croatia was forging a plan for destroying the Serb population in Kninska Krajina, Schabas underlined.

The Canadian professor strived to prove that there are no grounds for Croatia's claim by detailed analyses of the judgments that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) delivered to officers of the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and Serb...