Serbian Prime Minister Ivica Dacic said on Saturday that the acquittal of Croatian generals Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac by the Hague war crimes tribunal would seriously affect the post-war reconciliation process in the region, adding that the ruling confirmed that the tribunal and the international community were using double standards for war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia, Serbian public broadcaster RTS reported.
"This will have grave consequences for the reconciliation process in the region. How can someone ask us to condemn all crimes, while others are allowed not to condemn crimes against the Serbian people?" Dacic told the press during a visit to the northern city of Zrenjanin.
Dacic said that "it will go down in the annals that two chambers of the same court delivered such sharply opposed rulings."
"It is obvious that the verdict is political. Its aim was to absolve Croatia of responsibility for crimes committed against Serbs. The reality is completely different - more than 200,000 Serbs were expelled from Croatia and several thousand were killed," the Serbian prime minister said.
"This has nothing to do with Croatia and the Croatian people. We need to build good relations, but the building of good relations means to sincerely move forward from what happened in the past. This will upset those relations for years, which is not good for the region," he added.
Dacic wondered if it was possible in modern Europe "for someone to expel 200,000 and kill several thousand civilians and not be held responsible? It seemed to me that it was not possible but now I see that it is."
"The ruling is not in accordance with the international community's commitment that all war crimes should be approached objectively and that, through the reconciliation process, everyone should face up to the fact that crimes were committed and that someone must be brought to account," Dacic said.
The First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, Aleksandar Vucic, said that Serbia would continue to meet its international commitments, but that "citizens of Serbia are shocked" by the acquittal of the Croatian generals, according to a Defence Ministry statement.
Vucic was in Halifax, Canada, attending an international security forum. During his talks with Canadian Defence Minister Peter MacKay, he said that international law "must be equal for all." "International justice and international law must apply to all and not just to one party," Vucic was quoted as saying.
