The Laws of War and NATO attacks on Yugoslavia (original) (raw)

2003, Chicago-Kent Journal of International and Comparative …

In May 2000 the Serbian Public Prosecutor, Dragisa Krsmanic, began the indictment of the leaders of the USA, the UK, France and Germany, and former NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana, for war crimes. These charges, laid in the Serbian Supreme Court, relate to alleged violations by NATO forces of the Geneva Convention on the conduct of war. These violations were alleged to have occurred in the course of NATO attacks upon Serbia, intended to persuade the Yugoslav Government to comply with United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1160, 1199 and 1203, which required its withdrawal from the province of Kosovo. From 24 March to 8 June 1999 NATO was alleged to have breached the Convention by using cluster bombs, and by attacking civilians, residential areas, and non-military targets. Ironically, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and four other Yugoslav Serbs have been indicted by the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, also for alleged war crimes. In this case it is against the Kosovo Albanians. The situation is one fraught with dangers and difficulties for the international community. As with the trial of Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie case, the development of rules and procedures of international criminal trials have been influenced more by political considerations than by legal. But we can say with confidence that an international criminal legal system is developing.