THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Jan 23(Hina) - Testifying against former Yugoslav Army General Pavle Strugar at the Hague war crimes tribunal on Friday, former Montenegrin Foreign Minister Nikola Samardzic labelled the attack of the former Yugoslav
People's Army (JNA) and Montenegro's Territorial Defence on southern Croatia's Dubrovnik in 1991 as "the biggest disgrace possible".
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Jan 23(Hina) - Testifying against former Yugoslav
Army General Pavle Strugar at the Hague war crimes tribunal on Friday,
former Montenegrin Foreign Minister Nikola Samardzic labelled the
attack of the former Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and Montenegro's
Territorial Defence on southern Croatia's Dubrovnik in 1991 as "the
biggest disgrace possible".#L#
"What we did in Dubrovnik in 1991 is the biggest disgrace possible,"
Samardzic said.
The 70-year-old Strugar is charged with the shelling of Dubrovnik,
notably its Old Town, in December 1991, from positions of the JNA
Second Operational Group, which he commanded.
Samardzic confirmed that Dubrovnik had been subjected to large-scale
shelling on that December 6, that protected religious and cultural
buildings had been deliberate targets and that they had sustained
major damage.
The witness said that in October 1991 he had launched a peace
initiative which was adopted in Zagreb but that the then Montenegrin
president, Momir Bulatovic, had put an end to it, probably on orders
from Belgrade.
"We couldn't order Strugar and the JNA to stop the war but we did try
to stop the killing of people and the destruction of the city," he
said.
After that, the then Montenegrin government with Premier Milo
Djukanovic at its helm did nothing to stop the attacks on Dubrovnik,
Samardzic added.
He went on to say that Montenegrin authorities had not been involved
in attempts to create the Republic of Dubrovnik. Military intelligence
and the People's Party of Novak Kilibarda, who saw himself as the
president of that republic, were working on that, he said.
Montenegro's opposition parties, led by the Liberal Alliance, staged
protest rallies against the attacks on Dubrovnik, Samardzic added.
Speaking of the apology over those attacks Djukanovic made to the
Croatian public in 2000 in his capacity as Montenegro's president, the
witness said it confirmed the attacks had not been the result of the
danger that the "Ustasha" might attack Montenegro, as Strugar and
Bulatovic had claimed in 1991, but that it had been launched as part
of the Greater Serbia project.
Nobody in Montenegro has ever been called to account for the attacks
on Dubrovnik, which claimed the lives of 43 and left hundreds of
people wounded, or for the plunder of the Dubrovnik area, Samardzic
said.
(Hina) ha sb