Serbs relieved,Bosnia dismayed by genocide verdict

BELGRADE/SARAJEVO, Feb 26 (Reuters) Serbs expressed relief today when the International Court of Justice cleared their country of genocide in Bosnia, while Bosnian Muslim and Croat leaders voiced disappointment at the long-awaited verdict.

In one of the biggest cases in its 60-year history, the highest UN court said Serbia had violated its obligation to prevent and punish genocide, but had not planned it or carried it out in the 1995 Bosnian Serb massacre of 8,000 Muslims.

Besides heaping more international embarrassment on Serbia, a guilty verdict could have generated compensation claims in the billions. Bosnians who had long hoped for the truth about the 1992-95 war to be acknowledged felt cheated.

''We who were in Bosnia know what happened here right from the beginning of the war and I know what I will teach my kids,'' said Bosnian Croat leader Zeljko Komsic.

At least 100,000 people died in the fighting, three quarters of them Muslims and Croats. Bosnian Serbs using the might of the Yugoslav Army against their lighter-armed adversaries swept swathes of land clean of non-Serbs, culminating in Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two, at Srebrenica.

''For all of us, the very difficult part of the verdict is that Serbia did not do all it could to prevent genocide,'' Serbia's pro-Western president Boris Tadic said.

''It is very important that the parliament as soon as possible adopts a declaration which will clearly condemn the crime committed in the region of Srebrenica,'' he said.

Persuading parliament to pass such a resolution will not be easy. The ultranationlist Radical Party, the largest party in parliament, and the Socialists of the late strongman Slobodan Milosevic both deny the Srebrenica massacre.

A June 2005 attempt to condemn Srebrenica failed because a majority in parliament insisted it include balancing condemnation of all crimes against Serbs going back to World War Two.

Serbia's caretaker Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica issued a statement which also did not acknowledge any guilt.

''The ruling ... is particularly important because it has freed Serbia of the serious accusation that it committed genocide,'' he said. ''Light must be shed on all war crimes and their perpetrators, and must be punished in a court of law.'' PRESSURE TO DELIVER MLADIC For Bosnian Serbs who opposed the lawsuit filed by Bosnia's Muslim-led government in 1993, the ICJ ruling established that their republic was not illegitimately founded on genocide, as Bosnian Muslim leader Haris Silajdzic alleges.

''This ruling sends a message that the survival of the Serb Republic is unquestionable,'' said the speaker of the Serb Republic parliament, Igor Radojicic.

Prime Minister Milorad Dodik said the Serb Republic owed an apology to Srebrenica victims, but it was not responsible for it. He also said that the crime was not genocide.

''Individuals should be held responsible for that massacre, not institutions or peoples,'' he said.

For people like 60-year-old Fatija Suljic, who lost her husband and three sons at Srebrenica, the ICJ's ruling added insult to injury. It was ''a disaster for our people'', she said.

The United Nations tribunal for former Yugoslavia indicted 19 people for Srebrenica, including Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic. Both remain at large, their whereabouts now unclear.

Tadic said that as long as Serbia continues to fail to extradite the perpetrators it would have ''dramatic political and economic consequences'' for the country.

The European Union froze talks with Belgrade on Serbia's EU membership aspirations in May, saying it was not trying hard enough to arrest Mladic.

Nenad Canak, of Serbia's new Social Democrat-Liberal Democratic coalition, said he was ''speechless''.

''The only thing I can say is to remind you of the words of Primo Levi written on a wall in Dachau. ''The man who denies Auschwitz is the same one who is ready to repeat it.'' Reuters SAM RS2350