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SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC'S LAST
WALTZ
By Ruth Wedgwood
New York Times, March 12, 2007
EVEN from the grave, Slobodan Milosevic roils the international system.
When he was alive, his violence in the Balkans required NATO to intervene twice. He
swaggered on the stage of the Dayton peace negotiations. And even after he was bundled off
to a United Nations court to stand trial on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes
against humanity, Mr. Milosevic tried to convert his criminal defense into a political
rant to be shown nightly on Serbian television. The trial meandered for four years, and
both the presiding judge and Mr. Milosevic died before a final verdict could be returned.
Now the skeleton's waltz has turned one more time around the dance floor. This round
brings us the ruling of the International Court of Justice, in a civil suit that should
never have been brought if its result was to be so meager. In 1993, Bosnia sued Serbia in
the International Court of Justice, sometimes known as the World Court, for planning,
abetting and committing genocide in the Bosnian conflict. Bosnia argued that the Serbian
militias'... |
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