BERLIN — The United Nations' highest court ruled Monday that Serbia failed to prevent the massacre of Muslims during the Bosnian war but was not directly responsible for the atrocities, ending a landmark case in which an entire nation was tried for genocide.
The decision, which was closely watched by other countries facing allegations of war crimes, was viewed by Serbia as a vindication of its role in the 1992-95 war. The ruling angered leaders of Bosnia-Herzegovina and ended their efforts to win reparations in the killing of as many as 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica.
The court did find that the Bosnian Serb army had committed genocide and that neighboring Serbia had "known influence" over them. The 13-2 ruling by the International Court of Justice in The Hague blamed Serbia for not taking "any initiative to prevent what happened or any action on its part to avert the atrocities."
The massacre in Srebrenica was the worst in Europe since World War II. The Bosnian town had been declared a safe area by U.N. peacekeepers until it was overrun in July 1995 by ethnic Serb forces. Bosnian Serbs opposed a move by the country's Muslims and Croats to secede from Yugoslavia.
The court ruling, which took more than two hours for Judge Rosalyn Higgins to read, comes as Serbia is under international pressure to arrest Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general accused of orchestrating the massacre. Mladic and former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic have been indicted for crimes against humanity but have been at large for years.
The failure of Western governments to locate Mladic and Karadzic and arrest them has led many Bosnians to charge that the West is unsympathetic to the deaths of tens of thousands of Muslims.
The court ordered Serbia to turn Mladic over to the U.N.'s war crimes tribunal in The Hague. However, it ruled that because Serbia's government did not deliberately intend to "destroy in whole or in part" Bosnia's Muslim population, Bosnia was not entitled to billions of dollars in reparations.
"Financial compensation is not the appropriate form of reparation for the breach of obligation to prevent genocide," the court said.
Reaction to the verdict underscored the differences between Serbia's moderates and nationalists in dealing with the court and tribunal. Many Serbs consider Mladic a hero. In a veiled reference to the demand for Mladic's arrest, Serbian President Boris Tadic said that if the hard-liners didn't cooperate with the international community, the country would face "dramatic political and economic consequences."
