Croatia and Serbia will look to the future, officials say

Croatia and Serbia will look to the future, officials say

Despite lawsuits in the International Court of Justice, the two countries will continue co-operating and helping each other implement EU standards.

Croatia Deputy Prime Minister Vesna Pusic (left) and her Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic met in Belgrade on February 24th. [Nikola Barbutov/SETimes]

Although the hearings on the mutual genocide lawsuits filed by Serbia and Croatia opened last week at The International Court of Justice, officials and analysts said the past should not encumber present and future relations between the countries.

The deputy prime ministers of Serbia and Croatia, Aleksandar Vucic and Vesna Pusic, said during a meeting on February 24th that there are numerous fields in which the countries can co-operate, like EU principle implementation, education and the economy.

Croatia filed its charges of genocide against Serbia on July 2nd 1999, demanding financial compensation, punishment for all war criminals, information about missing persons and return of stolen cultural heritage.

Serbia filed a countersuit on January 4th 2010, accusing Croatia of genocide and ethnic cleansing that affected 230,000 Serbs during Operation Storm.

Public hearings on both lawsuits began on March 3rd.

Vucic said the majority of citizens and officials in Croatia think Serbia was an aggressor toward their country in the 1990s, while people in Serbia think Croatia conducted ethnic cleansing in Krajina.

"Let us not poison our relations because we see past events in different ways," Vucic said.

He said the court in The Hague will decide the cases, and officials in Serbia and Croatia need to focus on the future.

Pusic said...