THE HAGUE -- Monday – Ex-Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok told a court on Monday his government did not have any influence over pinpointing specific NATO bomb targets in Serbia five years ago in a damages claim by relatives of victims.
A lawyer representing relatives of those killed in NATO raids on a Serbian state television station in Belgrade and the Nis region quizzed the elder statesman at a hearing which they hope could eventually lead to a civil damages case.
Kok was premier of the Netherlands - a founding member of NATO - during 1999 air strikes by the alliance against the former Yugoslavia in a bid to force it to withdraw from Kosovo where its troops were blamed for driving out the majority ethnic Albanian population.
At a preliminary hearing in the Hague district court, Kok said that while NATO member states agreed to air strikes against certain types of targets, "the Netherlands did not have any influence on the choice of individual targets".
More than a dozen victims and relatives of victims from NATO attacks on the RTS television station on April 23 and on Nis on May 7, 1999, initiated the hearing to determine whether there is evidence the air strikes breached humanitarian law.
"They (the plaintiffs) are considering civil proceedings against the state and eventually also against the people, who according to them were responsible for decision making on the attacks," the Hague court said.
Also testifying today, former Dutch Foreign Minister Jozias van Aartsen said the national television station was an important communication tool of the Serb side. “It was the private property of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his family,” he told the court.
Kok admitted there had been a lot of “technical problems” during the bombing of Nis on May 7, in which cluster bombs are said to have killed 15 people in the town’s market place. The former PM said this did not mean the use of cluster bombs was illegal.
The head of the Association of Peace Lawyers, one of the groups behind the charges, said the preliminary hearing had established the need for a full trial.
“I think it’s been established that the Dutch government was involved in the decision-making within NATO and that it was responsible for the selection of targets and the attacks that ensued,” said Meindert Stelling.
B92 learns from unofficial sources that some relatives of the victims dismissed Dutch lawyer Nik Steinen over his involvement in the defence of Milosevic at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.