Serbia:Yesterday's ruling seemed only to harden positions and deepen resentment in Serbia and Bosnia, writes Dan McLaughlin.
As usual in the zero-sum game of Balkan politics, all sides claimed victory yesterday after the ruling on Serbia's role in the alleged genocide of Bosnia's Muslims during the 1992-5 war.
Despite emollient words from Serb president Boris Tadic, there was no sign the verdict would encourage nationalists in Belgrade or Bosnia's Republika Srpska to accept responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre or for their aggression under Slobodan Milosevic, or prompt Muslim and Croat leaders in Sarajevo to draw a line under the horrors of the 1990s.
President Tadic urged parliament to adopt a resolution condemning the genocidal massacre, which Belgrade was found guilty of failing to prevent.
But Serb prime minister Vojislav Kostunica, along with ultra-nationalists who won last month's general election and like-minded leaders in Republika Srpska, appeared to interpret the court's failure to prove Belgrade's genocidal intent as absolution for its warmongering, and as support for their claim that the West made Serbia the scapegoat for Yugoslavia's bloody collapse.
"The ruling . . . is particularly important because it has freed Serbia of the serious accusation that it committed genocide," said Kostunica, who is burnishing his nationalist credentials as he vies to retain his post in tough coalition talks with Tadic. "Light must be shed on all war crimes and their perpetrators, and must be punished in a court of law."
In Republika Srpska, politicians found themselves in the peculiar position of praising a United Nations court, after spending most of the last decade deriding them as corrupt tools of US and EU hegemony.
They used the ruling to attack Haris Silajdzic, the Bosnian Muslim leader who wants to abolish the country's cumbersome "entities" - a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Republika Srpska that he says were created by a Serb policy of genocide.
"This ruling sends a message that the survival of Republika Srpska is unquestionable," said Igor Radojicic, the Serb region's parliamentary speaker.
Its prime minister, Milorad Dodik, said Republika Srpska owed an apology to victims of Srebrenica, but he denied that it was genocide or any responsibility of the Serb nation.
As the West encourages Bosnia's communities to unite around the goal of EU entry, the court verdict appeared to drive another wedge between them.
Silajdzic criticised the ruling but took some heart from its condemnation of Serbia for failing to prevent a genocidal act.
"It turns out there was genocide in Bosnia but it is not known who committed it," he said with grim sarcasm. "We need to change the system and the [Bosnian] constitution that are a direct result of the genocide," he insisted, repeating a demand to which the Bosnian Serbs have threatened to respond with a declaration of independence.
In Serbia and Bosnia, the decision seemed only to harden positions and deepen resentment.
"We who were in Bosnia know what happened here right from the beginning of the war," said Bosnian Croat leader Zeljko Komsic, who thought the court was too soft on Serbia. "I know what I will teach my kids."