(MENAFN- Gulf Times) The UN's highest court has rejected rival claims of genocide by Croatia and Serbia in landmark rulings over their 1991-1995 war, and urged the former foes to turn the page on their bloody history.
Croatia voiced dismay with the judgment, saying that it changed "nothing" in its relations with Belgrade, but Serbia said it hoped it would help forge better ties.
International Court of Justice (ICJ) chief judge Peter Tomka first dismissed Zagreb's claim that Serb forces committed genocide during Croatia's war of independence.
He made a similar ruling in a counter-claim by Belgrade over a Croatian counter-offensive that forced 200,000 Serbs to flee after the last major battle of the war.
Tomka said that both sides had committed crimes during the conflict, including forcible displacement, but that neither had proved genocide, which "pre-supposes the intent to destroy a group, at least in part".
But he added: "The court encourages the parties to continue their cooperation with a view to offering appropriate reparation to the victims of such violations, thus consolidating peace and stability in the region."
Zagreb had dragged Belgrade before the ICJ in 1999 on genocide charges linked to the war in Croatia that killed 20,000 people, one of several conflicts during the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
Serbia was accused of ethnic cleansing as a "form of genocide" in the town of Vukovar and other areas, leading to large numbers of Croats being displaced, killed or tortured and their property destroyed.
Vukovar was captured after a harrowing three-month-long siege by the Yugoslav army (JNA) and Serb rebels, one of the darkest chapters of the conflict.
The Hague-based Yugoslav war crimes tribunal has sentenced several Serb commanders for war crimes committed at Vukovar, including senior commander Mile Mrksic, who was jailed for 20 years on appeal.
Mrksic was convicted for his role in the murder of more than 200 prisoners at a farm outside Vukovar whose bodies were dumped in mass graves.
After the fall of the town, about 22,000 non-Serbs were expelled, and about 350 people from the Vukovar region are still reported missing.
Belgrade responded with a counter-suit in 2010, saying that about 200,000 ethnic Serbs were forced to flee when Croatia launched Operation Storm to retake its territory in 1995.
Following the offensive, the proportion of ethnic Serbs in Croatia shrank from 12% to 4%.
Belgrade was outraged in 2012 when Operation Storm's Croatian military commander, Ante Gotovina, was acquitted on appeal before the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
Tomka extensively referred to rulings by ICTY, which has never indicted any suspect for genocide in Croatia, saying that the tribunal's findings were "generally consistent" with those of the ICJ.
Speaking outside the courtroom at the stately Peace Palace, Serbian Justice Minister Nikola Selkovic said the ruling "is going to start a new and blank page in our relationship with Croatia".
"We have to live with each other," he said. "I'm sure we have learnt a good lesson for the future."
"Maybe tomorrow, we'll be both in the European Union," referring to Serbia's bid to enter the bloc which Croatia joined in 2013.
But the reaction from Zagreb was one of dismay.
"We are not satisfied with the court's ruling, but we accept it in a civilised manner," Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic told reporters in Zagreb.
At the court, Croatian Justice Minister Orsat Miljenic said: "There are so many elements that confirm that crimes were committed ... by the Yugoslav army and Serbian forces."
"It is a however a judgment by the court that we fully respect," he said, but added that it "did not change relationships with Serbia".
Ties between the two countries improved slowly after the war but turned frosty in 2012 after inflammatory comments by both sides.
So far the ICJ, which rules in disputes between states, has recognised only one genocide case since opening its doors in 1946.
Genocide is the most serious of international crimes but also the hardest to prove.
In 2007 the court ruled that genocide had taken place in 1995, at Srebrenica in neighbouring Bosnia, when almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered and their bodies dumped in mass graves by Bosnian Serb troops who overran a UN-protected enclave.
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