War crimes, Nokia: Forgiveness Possible

Last week, Serbian President Aleksandar Vuciq has stated that “the crime in Recak has been fabricated”, which has sparked harsh reactions by Kosovo authorities, who have described this statement as denying war crimes.

Politologist Ramush Tahiri says the base of verbal clashes between Kosovo authorities and Serbia is the concept, which Serbia has over the wars in the former Yugoslavia and which is different from the one having other former republics, including Kosovo, which in the composition of the former joint state, had the status of the autonomous province.

According to him, Serbia thinks the wars in the former Yugoslavia have been civilian, separatist and the destruction of Yugoslavia. Other people, he says, think they have been their freedom wars, including Kosovo, which war with Serbia, see as a way to save genocide and occupation from Serbia.

“If this issue is not resolved, there can be no agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, because it is fair that without Serbia's recognition that Serbia's precisely Serbian politics and namely the policy of (former Serbian president Slobodan) Milosevqi was guilty of the collapse of Yugoslavia, there can be no progress. There may be no two culprits in this war, but one will be a deliverer and the other occupied”, Tahiri says.

Serbian political affairs director Randjel Nojrik, former Kosovo Assembly President, estimates that Kosovo and Serbia's authorities -- through verbal clashes over the war crimes issue -- are buying time to fix domestic problems.

This verbal clash is the purchase of time for Pristina and Belgrade, taking into account that they are not ready to talk right now. At the moment that the international community sees fit to sit at the table, all of this will be forgotten and will approach those solutions that are possible. There are solutions to talk about, taking into account that the agreement (of Brussels) in the same way does not respect either Belgrade or Pristina”, Nojjic points out.

Both connoisseurs and political developments estimate that a comprehensive and judicially binding agreement between Kosovo and Serbia, which would solve the dispute between the two countries, cannot have a positive alternative.

But whether such an agreement will be dealt with and the eventual apology for those crimes, according to them, is a little reliable.

Politologist Tahiri says Serbia's quest for crimes committed in Kosovo is rather an emotional issue, which has no significant weight as a legal-penal issue.

Meanwhile, according to him, the legal issue is for criminals who have committed war crimes to be brought to justice and to respond to crimes, as well as politics, which has caused these crimes, to be tried and to receive a sentence.

There will be no apology nor will there be any attempts. Until it's done in German politics, we've had it (canceplaren) Merkel in Auschwitz, so they've brought her into law, against fascism in the resurrection, and against those who deny the Holocaust. But in Serbia, the latter considers that such wars have suffered and do not feel guilty”, Tahiri estimates.

Nokia points out that a review of war crimes will come in order at some point. But for the time being, the conditions for such a thing are not yet ripe, according to him.

However, as he says, when the parties agree to a deal, they will sit down and face past problems and each side accept their sins. But within the agreement itself, he does not expect a plea for war crimes.

“I think this will not be, unless the international community finds that such a thing is necessary. After all, we have agreements from past Balkan wars, where the parties have agreed, but there has been no apology in the sense that it even formally is written in the agreement. Forgiveness is possible when relations are heated and both sides are ready for something like that. I don't expect anyone to insist that something like that be held in the agreement”, says Nojik.

Both connoisseurs and political developments estimate that verbal clashes between Kosovo authorities and Serbia, in terms of war crimes, will continue further.

The Serbian president's statement, Vuciq, which has prompted reactions in Kosovo, has come after being sentenced to 2 years in prison by the Constitutional Court in Pristina, former Kosovo Government Minister Ivan Todosijevic, for publicly promoting and spreading hatred, division and non-compliance among national, racial and ethnic groups living in Kosovo.

He had declared on 24 March this year that Recak's “size was fiction” and that the Albanian “terrorists forged all of this”. /rel/