At the height of the bloody Bosnian war in July 1995, Bosnian Serb Gen Ratko Mladic is filmed by his own propaganda unit striding into the small town of Srebrenica, a UN "safe haven". "Just before a great Serb holy day, we give this town to the Serb nation," he declaims to troops around him. "... the time has come to take revenge on the Muslims." Seven thousand men and boys paid with their lives in what Judge Fouad Riad told the International War Crimes Tribunal were "scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history."
Now the UN's highest court, the International Court of Justice, in a case taken by Bosnia-Herzegovina against the Republic of Serbia, has rightly declared what few doubted, that Mladic's actions on behalf of Bosnia's self-proclaimed statelet of Republika Srpska, the puppet of Serbia, constituted genocide. But the court only implicated Serbia itself in failing to prevent genocide, not the more serious charge of complicity in it.
Key to its finding was its conclusion that no one in Serbia, or any official organ of the state, could be shown to have had the deliberate intention to "destroy in whole or in part" the Bosnian Muslim population - a critical element in the 1948 Genocide Convention. But the court found that Serbia had the power to foresee and prevent the slaughter and failed to use it. Had it withdrawn its considerable military and financial support from the Republika Srpska, the latter would have had its options severely constrained.
The International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court, based in The Hague, is not to be confused with the newer International Criminal Court, set up to deal with war crimes. It is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations and only rules on disputes between states. Set up under the UN Charter, it has delivered 92 decisions since 1946 on issues ranging from territorial disputes, to arguments about treaties, to rows over interference in the internal affairs of states and the rights of asylum. It is the first time a state has been tried for genocide, outlawed in 1948 after the Holocaust.
The court's decisions are binding but there are no means of enforcing them, and so they have moral rather than actual force. The court, however, specifically required Serbia to hand Mladic over for trial to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Serbia has claimed it has been unable to arrest Mladic since his indictment 12 years ago but must act now if it is to see any progress in its international standing or frozen relationship with the EU.
A first welcome step would be the endorsement by Serbia's parliament of a resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre, as proposed by president Boris Tadic. It would mark an important break with the outrageous denial that Serb's ultra-nationalists still maintain. As one Serb liberal yesterday pointed out, recalling Primo Levi's words written on a wall in Dachau: "The man who denies Auschwitz is the same one who is ready to repeat it."