So There

As the BBC puts it:

The UN's highest court has cleared Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide during the 1990s Bosnian war. But the International Court of Justice did rule that Belgrade had violated international law by failing to prevent the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica.

Bosnia brought the case and would have sought billions of dollars from Serbia in compensation if successful. The case is the first of a state being charged with genocide. Individuals have been convicted of genocide in Bosnia. The Bosnian Muslim leader expressed disappointment at the ruling, but a senior Bosnian Serb official hailed it.

At least 100,000 people died in the 1992-1995 war, triggered by the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. Bosnia's Muslims and Croats wanted to cut ties with Belgrade, a move opposed by Bosnian Serbs.

The case, Bosnia and Herzegovina versus Serbia and Montenegro, began a year ago and a panel of judges has been deliberating since hearings ended in May 2006. Bosnia argued that Belgrade incited ethnic hatred, armed Bosnian Serbs and was an active participant in the killings. Belgrade said the conflict was an internal war between Bosnia's ethnic groups and denied any state role in genocide.

In the ruling, the president of the court, Judge Rosalyn Higgins, said: "The court finds that the acts of genocide at Srebrenica cannot be attributed to the respondent's (Serbia) state organs."
However the court added that the leaders of Serbia failed to comply with its international obligation to prevent the killings and punish those responsible.

The court also rejected Bosnia's claim for reparations. "Financial compensation is not the appropriate form of reparation," the ruling said. The war crimes tribunal in The Hague has already found individuals guilty of genocide in Bosnia and established the Srebrenica massacre as genocide.

Under a 1995 peace accord, Bosnia remained a single state, but power was devolved to a Muslim-Croat federation and a Bosnian Serb Republic. The Bosnian Muslim member of the country's tripartite presidency, Haris Siladzic, told the BBC there was "disappointment" at the ruling among Bosnian Muslims. However he said he was pleased that the court had "ruled that Serbia and Montenegro had violated the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide by not preventing or punishing the perpetrators of the genocide". In the Serb Republic, Krstan Simic, a senior member of the governing ruling Union of Independent Social-Democrats, said he was pleased that the judges had taken "real facts " into account.

The ruling also comes with Serbia still facing challenges linked to the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. Admission talks with the European Union have been stalled over Belgrade's failure to hand over war crimes suspects for trial. It also faces final talks with the United Nations on the future of Kosovo, with the province heading towards near-statehood despite Serbian opposition.

So, what about the failure of Bosnia's loudest backers to prevent or punish the ongoing crime of genocide against, for example, the Chaldo-Assyrian Christians of Iraq? What about the crimes of genocide perpetrated by such neocon darlings as the Holocaust-denier who re-created in 1990s Europe the full panoply of 1930s Fascism (Franjo Tudjman), the Wahhabi rabble-rouser who had been a recruitment sergeant for the SS (Alija Izetbegovic), and the filially black-shirted Wahhabi traffickers of the Taliban's heroin into Europe (the Kosovo "Liberation" Army)? What about the KLA's transformation, on the UN's watch, of putatively independent Kosovo into a Mafia fiefdom? When is anyone going to challenge Clare Short and Private Eye about their new-found opposition to the neocon-Wahhabi alliance after they cheered it on at the tops of their voices in Yugoslavia? And why does anyone still employ Stephen Pollard, Oliver Kamm, Johann Hari, David Aaronovitch, or any of the rest of them?