Serbian Foreign Ministry respects ICJ recommendation

BELGRADE- The Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs released on Tuesday that it respects the recommendation issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague for both the Serbian and the Croatian side to invest efforts and solve the fate of the people gone missing during the war in Croatia in the period 1991-1995.

The Ministry released that it will invest additional efforts to this end and underscored that it believes such steps would create the conditions to solve the fate of Serbs gone missing in Croatia as soon as possible.

The court hearing on the crimes is a warning for everyone that something like this must not be allowed to happen ever again, and the obligation deriving thereon is that all individuals responsible for crimes need to be found and punished, the release states.

The Ministry stated that the Tuesday ICJ decision in The Hague, as the main judiciary body of the UN, puts an end to the 15-year-long dispute between Serbia and Croatia on mutual genocide suits.

Serbia's legal team believes that, on the whole, there is no room for dissatisfaction, states the release, adding that the court dropped the Croatian suit as it found that it has no legal grounds and that the crimes committed in Croatia do not constitute a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and that Serbia has not committed genocide.

Although ICJ dropped the Serbian counter-suit as well, it found that grave crimes were committed against Krajina Serbs and it also established that the Croatian top officials had an intention of banishing Serbs from Krajina, the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs released.