A statement issued on the web site of the office of the Serbian president said Tadic believed the Hague tribunal's verdicts were in line with the law, and hoped that they would contribute to the process of reconciliation.

Tadic said in the statement that he did not want to go into analyses of whether the verdicts were justified as it would constitute interference in the work of the Hague tribunal and judiciary and that as President he did not interfere in the work of judicial and UN institutions.

The head of the NGO Fund for Humanitarian Law, Natasa Kandic, said a final verdict against Gotovina and Markac would put an end to differing interpretations of the events during Operation Storm.

The non-final verdict and the facts established by the court and the evidence on which the verdict is based create room for harmonising previous interpretations of what happened in Operation Storm, she said.

Kandic believes that the most important element of the verdict is that it upheld the argument in the indictment about Gotovina and Cermak's involvement in a joint criminal enterprise.

The verdict will not disrupt relations between Serbia and Croatia and now room is being created where there must be more and more facts and fewer and fewer political observations and interpretations.

The vice-president of the leading opposition Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), Aleksandar Vucic, said he could not comment on the verdict because he had not seen it, but that he could say that the operations Flash and Storm "are among the gravest crimes committed after World War II in Europe's territory."

Dragan Markovic Palma, leader of the United Serbia party, one of the smaller parties in the ruling coalition government, called on the Croatian parliament to apologise to the Serb people "for the biggest ethnic cleansing campaign committed since World War Two in Operation Storm" and to abolish the national holiday commemorating the operation.

A state secretary at the Serbian Justice Ministry, Slobodan Homen, and the president of the Serb Renewal Movement (SPO), Vuk Draskovic, expressed satisfaction with the verdict.

Homen, who is also the Serbian government's public relations coordinator, said the verdict showed a different picture of the events in the 1990s and the role of the Serb people in them, adding that more important than the verdict was the conclusion that the generals were guilty of "the crime we all have been aware of - the ethnic cleansing and expulsion of the Serb people."

Homen gave the statement while attending a commemoration for the World War II Chetnik leader Draza Mihajlovic, which was also attended by Draskovic, who said that the verdict showed what happened in Croatia - the ethnic cleansing of Serbs.

He also noted that many in Serbia would now be more careful about statements that the Hague tribunal was an anti-Serb tribunal.

The head of the documentation and information centre "Veritas", Savo Strbac, told the television network B92 that the verdicts against Gotovina and Markac were a "slap in the face of Croatian politics".

The verdict will prompt the European Union to reconsider if with "such a heavy burden" Croatia is ready to join the community of democratic countries, Strbac said.

The verdict will also be "strong wind in the sails" of Serbia's genocide counter-suit against Croatia, said Strbac.