Parties present war crimes declarations

Parties present war crimes declarations

The LDP Declaration would also oblige Serbia to sanction any attempt of condoning or playing down the genocide in Srebrenica.

“The mere fact that Serbia still debates and makes light of the crimes in Bosnia, measuring them against other crimes, means that Serbia hasn’t resolved its issues of the past, harboring the same set of values that put our country in the ICJ dock”, LDP leader Čedomir Jovanović said.

The LDP coalition in Belgrade circulated a petition yesterday in support of its draft declaration which needs 15,000 signatures in order to make its way to the Parliament’s agenda.

In the meantime, the National Parliament already received the Radicals’ version of the draft declaration denouncing all crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.

Aleksandar Vučić, secretary general of the Serbian Radical Party (SRS), qualified the banishing of 500,000 Serbs from the Krajina as the gravest crime of all in the 1990s. The Radical did not deny the existence of the Srebrenica crime, but disproved of the ICJ ruling that labels it an act of genocide.

Vučić claimed that a general condemnation of all crime did not mean that Serbia refused to face the Srebrenica crimes.

“To evade responsibility is to focus on Srebrenica only, overlooking other crimes and victims. We want to mention all of them, including the 500,000 Serbs driven out from the Krajina and the Serb victims of the killings in Sarajevo and Bratunci. We cannot single out Srebrenica. Since all crimes are the same, each perpetrator must be punished, and all victims remembered regardless of their nationality and religion”, Vučić argued.

The LDP Declaration advocates immediate fulfilling of Serbia’s international responsibilities, and the handing over of Ratko Mladić to The Hague, while the Radicals prefer war crimes trials be held in Serbia. “I haven’t seen any evidence connecting Mladić to the killings in Srebrenica”, Vučić said.

Since Serbian President Boris Tadić initiated the idea of adopting the declaration in response to the ruling of the International Court of Justice, his party (DS) said that the new government should draft and sponsor the document.

At Democratic Party senior council meeting in Niš held Saturday, Tadić said that in the wake of the ICJ ruling no one can say that Mladić should walk free because he protected the interests of Serbian people.