Serbia on Monday filed charges of genocide against Croatia at the United Nations" International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Serbian foreign ministry said, according to dpa. The move followed Serbia"s December 31 announcement that it had prepared a lawsuit for atrocities Croatian forces allegedly committed against the Serbs during the 1991-95 war in the former Yugoslavia. The move is a reaction to Croatia"s own genocide suit filed more than 10 years ago. In that suit, Zagreb accused Belgrade of ethnic cleansing and killing of 20,000 Croats during the war. Analysts warned that the suit and countersuit will lead to deterioration of ties between two countries. "Those are political suits, and there is no doubt among experts that neither side has any chance of winning," Zarko Puhovski, a professor of political philosophy at Zagreb University told the Belgrade daily Danas. Puhovski added that the public in Croatia is largely uninterested in the lawsuit "because people are more occupied with economic problems and surviving." Belgrade analyst Vojin Dimitrijevic also said that neither lawsuit has any chance of success. "Both lawsuits are a waste of time and energy, and the worst thing is that they will harm the improved relations between the two countries and make life difficult for Serbs living in Croatia," Dimitrijevic told Danas. The war in Croatia broke out in 1991 after Croatia split from the Yugoslav federation. The ICJ delivered a verdict in a similar lawsuit by Bosnia against Serbia in February 2007. That decision cleared Belgrade of genocide accusations but said Serbia had not done enough to stop Bosnian Serbs from committing genocide.
