Posted on 05/12/2005 11:31:24 AM PDT by Hoplite
BELGRADE, May 12 (Reuters) - Most Serbs still do not believe their forces committed atrocities in Croatia, Bosnia or Kosovo, a senior United States diplomat said on Thursday, so the idea of holding war crimes trials in the country is problematic.
Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia are all trying to show their capacity to deal with the past after the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, insisting they are ready and able to dispense justice for war crimes cases at home.
U.S. charge d'affaires Roderick Moore, speaking at a seminar in Belgrade, said Serbs widely failed to recognise that their countrymen had committed war crimes, making it difficult for the judiciary to prosecute and convict perpetrators.
"I don't believe the political climate in Serbia is wholly favourable for trying war crimes impartially in domestic courts," said Moore, speaking in Serbian.
"I don't believe that your society has accepted the full extent of the crimes Serbs committed in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo," he added.
The seminar was part of a debate on whether countries involved in the wars sparked by the breakup of Yugoslavia were ready to take over some of the heavy caseload of the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
Moore said less than half of Serbia's population believed that 7,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred in Srebrenica in 1995 by the forces of Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic, despite the testimony of witnesses, graves found and even the admission of Bosnian Serbs.
"Only 37 percent believe it is a war crime and only 38 percent believe Mladic should go to The Hague to answer for the crime," the envoy said.
Polls show the level of denial is similar for other atrocities, such as the killing of some 200 prisoners of war in Vukovar in Croatia in 1991, or for the 800 Kosovo Albanian bodies buried in Serbia during the 1999 war and found later.
"Your society doubts the crimes happened at all," he said.
Serbia significantly improved its cooperation with the U.N. court this year, delivering 12 suspects since January in line with a surrender policy that earned Belgrade European Union approval to forge closer ties with the wealthy bloc.
While welcoming that, Moore criticised the way officials hailed those who surrendered as "patriots" and failed to point to the crimes with which they were charged.
"Officials organised lavish farewell parties for some of them," he told the seminar.
The Croats unwillingness to cooperate is directly responsible for its tense relations with the EU right now.
Ronly bonly laden banned ping. see #2,16
So what screename was Ronly Bonly bin Laden/Great Prophet Zarqawi attempting to use this time?
Gad, what a loooo-zer!
I know you'd prefer to let the scummy Albanian Muhammedans have all the fun!
I thought it turned out the serbs were not the bad guys we thought they were. I must've missed something along the way.
>>We backed the wrong horse in this...as proven by 09-11
and continue to do so...<<
That's my take on it. And it was back then.
ironfang
ping
Figures that he'd go with one of his science fiction references. That little boy had a very tenuous connection to reality.
he's seen it with his very own eyes and smelt the stench! don't you believe him? To all who don't, you are ergo idiotiotic morons!!! :)
correction: "he didn't see"
So far, Hoplite, of all the wars and all the atrocities we committed, we still don't have a publically recognized and labeled official war criminal on record. Not one.
Countries deny their atrocities, but we all know that none is without sin. Self-accusation is the first step in repenetence, and as far as I am concenred there is not a single country in this world that can rise to that occasion.
Japan grudgingly apologized to the Chinese 60 years after the fact. That didn't stop us from keeping close ties with Japan. It Germany a while too, to apologize to Poland (Willy Brandt), and even then it was considered a scandal among Germans of the late 1960's.
Get off your high and righteous horse and wash your own hands first. Then pontificate to others.
Reading a lot about the American Civil War or how they call it down here in the South "War between the States", why should Serbia be different then the USA....???
The Southerners feel like they were victims....
Everybody needs something to believe in. Unfortunately some of us set our sites extremely low and feel compelled to spew our shallow blather all over the shoes of us that know better. *Shrug* I suppose we should give him points for persistence.
Has anyone noticed that our Ohio-based Marines are dying on the Syrian-Iraqi border because they are searching house-by-house in those stinking villages for insurgents? Where is our air force? They could flatten those cesspools in one afternoon, but no-o-o-o...we don't want to kill any civilian Muslim colaborators. It didn't bother the US one bit to bomb civilian Serbian trains and villages and cities from 33,000 feet up. Our jet jockeys high-fived after those missions that destroyed Christian churches and cemeteries that were a thousand years old. We have paid dearly for what we did, and we are not finished paying yet.
Gaurding a Popeye's Chicken restaurant will do serious damage to one's mental faculties.
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