Serbian National Defense Council Of America, commemorating the second year of NATO attack on Serbia, is organizing its

Fifth Annual Symposium

An international symposium to be held in Monastery Gracanica, Greyslake, IL on March 24, 2001

Serbian National Defense Council Of America and its official publication Sloboda/Liberty, commemorating the second year of NATO attack on Serbia, is organizing its
Fifth Annual Symposium

Hague Tribunal

Political or Legal Institution?

Gracanica monastery, Greyslake, IL

Saturday, March 24, 2001

Guests:

Ambassador James Bissett (Ottawa)

Dr Thomas Fleming (Rockford)

Dr Michael Stenton (London)

Dr Srdja Trifkovic (Chicago)

Sir Alfred Sherman (London)

------------------- TIMETABLE ----------------------

• 11:00 a.m. - PARASTOS to victims of NATO bombardment of Serbia. Officiating His Grace Bishop LONGIN of New Gracanica Metropolitanate and clergy

• LUNCH

• 1:00 p.m. - SYMPOSIUM • 3:00 p.m. coffee break

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YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE SND SYMPOSIUM

THE HAGUE TRIBUNAL,

BETWEEN JUSTICE AND POLITICS

The Holy Mother of God Monastery, New Gracanica, Gracelake, March 24, 2001

The debate about the place and role of the Hague Tribunal is entering a critical period. Ms. Carla Del Ponte's increasingly shrill attacks on the Yugoslav President as "a man of the past" and her threats of renewed sanctions are coupled with the pressure from a segment of the Serbian political establishment to comply with her demands.

Should Belgrade resist the pressure from The Hague? Is the so-called International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) a proper court, or is it a political institution devoid of either legality or legitimacy?

Our panelists agree on the key starting point: that Ms. Del Ponte's institution is a misnomer: neither a "tribunal" - a forum of impartial justice - nor concerned with "war crimes" - understood as gross violations of certain norms of war, regardless of the identity of culprits and victims. The accused has no right to confront his accuser, making him immune from cross-examination. He is held de facto guilty until proven innocent. The tribunal investigates, indicts, prosecutes and renders sentence as a single body. It demands that arbitrarily named war criminals be physically delivered to The Hague. It does not allow defense attorneys to challenge the accusations, by hiding itself behind a lack of mandate for trial-in-absentia. These are but some of the many legal, political, and moral objections to the ICTY that will be considered at our symposium.

Such objections notwithstanding, some voices within Serbia claim that the fulfillment of Del Ponte's demands is a key precondition for Serbia's reintegration into the "international community." The advocates of this view apparently hope to find a shortcut that would take Yugoslavia out of its present critical predicament.

Several guests on our panel have already expressed the view the quest for the line of least resistance may only postpone Serbia's true recovery. The proponents of compliance - they say - fail to grasp the essentially pernicious role of the "international community" throughout the decade of discord, disintegration, and war in the former Yugoslavia. Their eagerness to present themselves as anti-nationalists blinds them to the realities of the outside world.

Our guests also agree that Serbia needs the truth about war crimes. It needs to be brutally frank about its own ghosts of the recent past, but in doing so it must not provide justification for the lie of primary Serbian culpability that is supposedly unique among the warring factions. And yet, we warn that this myth remains the basic assumption on which The Hague Tribunal is built. It is not a vehicle of judicial reconciliation in the Balkans, but an instrument of quasi-legal retaliation against the Serbs. Its definition of reconciliation is based on the propagandistic concept of aggression and genocide, as is witnessed in the indictments against the Bosnian Serb leaders. The Tribunal has criminalized their striving not to be forced into secession, while remaining mute about the culpability of the other two sides for a series of reckless, unconstitutional, illegitimate and illegal political decisions in 1990-1992 that caused the war.

Our symposium will examine the view that an acceptance of the assumptions that The Hague seeks to impose on the Serbs would not contribute either to reconciliation or to Serbia's reintegration into Europe. Some of our distinguished guests fear that a settlement based on a lie and on an arbitrary apportioning of war guilt can only guarantee new, even worse conflicts, five, ten or twenty years from now - as we have witnessed in the decades after Versailles.

The new, democratic Serbia, must not be burdened with the stigma of "genocide" that would be blithely accepted on false pretences, in exchange for a fistful of dollars. The political consequences of saying "no" to Del Ponte are far more bearable than the loss of sovereignty and dignity that "full cooperation" (read: compliance) would entail. In the short term Serbia may face a certain amount of unpleasantness, mixed with attempts to bribe Yugoslavia with money that has not even been promised. Saying "no" is also a matter of respecting the democratic will of the Serbian electorate.

On the other hand compliance with Del Ponte and extradition of Milosevic would guarantee an open-ended extension of the Serbian agony. Milosevic would be duly found guilty of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and any number of other mortal sins, not because he is guilty of them - which he may well be - but because the ICTY is not a "tribunal" at all. Its verdicts are already written and sealed; no surprises are possible, and a comprehensive assessment of the context of events is out of the question. The sentence against Milosevic would inevitably lead to the demand for Serbia's "denazification" through collective confessions of guilt and the obligatory, internationally mediated payments of reparations to the supposed victims, payments that will many times exceed the supposed dollar value of the suggested sale of principles.

In reality Serbia's status in Europe will not be measured through the prism of compliance but only through its own ability to embark on sustained economic, political and social recovery. ICTY is the wrong issue altogether: it exists only in so far as it enjoys the support of political decision-makers in the western world, primarily the United States.

The new administration in Washington is determined to revoke President Clinton's signature of the UN treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. It is notably reluctant to support a quasi-judicial instrument that is based on the same claim to international jurisdiction that provides the basis for the ICC. It may prove sympathetic to the argument that a public trial of Milosevic in the Serbian capital, and before a Serbian court, is the only way for both Serbia and the world to learn the truth about the tragic decade behind us. It is also the only way to do justice, and to see it done.

To consider these, and other related issues, join us on Saturday, March 24, at Nova Gracanica. We shall first attend a Hierarchical Liturgy and memorial service at 10 a.m. for the victims of the NATO bombing of Serbia, on the second anniversary of the aggression. After lunch our panelists will give their presentations, starting at 2 p.m. At 4 we shall have a coffee break, and then the panelists will take questions from the floor until 5 p.m.