The World Court opened hearings on Monday into a case by Serbia and Montenegro challenging the legality of Nato's 1999 air strikes after a Serb crackdown in Kosovo.
Nato members, including Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Canada, will appear before the UN's highest court to argue that it does not have jurisdiction to consider Serbia and Montenegro's claim.
"Belgium maintains all its preliminary objections as regards jurisdiction and admissibility," Belgian representative Jan Devadder told the court at the start of hearings to consider the court's jurisdiction in the case.
The Nato states concerned said at the time their action was justified by what they said was Belgrade's ethnic cleansing of Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanian population. The former Yugoslavia argued the air strikes violated international law.
Nato's 11-week bombing campaign forced a Serb pullout from Kosovo, ending what the alliance regarded as a crackdown by Serb forces against ethnic Albanians in the breakaway province during former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic's rule.
Human Rights Watch says that Nato bombs killed some 500 Yugoslav civilians between March and June, 1999. Yugoslav authorities said at the time that 2,500 Yugoslavs were killed.
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), also known as the World Court, in 1999 rejected a request by the former Yugoslavia for an interim ruling ordering the bombing to stop and threw out cases against the United States and Spain on a technicality.
Milosevic, on trial at the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. He does not recognise the court and has rejected the charges as false.
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