"The court unanimously finds that it has no jurisdiction to entertain the claim made in the application filed by Serbia and Montenegro on the 29th of April, 1999," Judge Chinaman Shi Jiuyong said reading the summary of a comprehensive ruling in The Hague on Wednesday.
He added that the ruling was the same for each country -- Belgium, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands and Portugal -- which Serbia cited in the claim suing them before the ICJ, which is also known as the World Court.
Serbia's claim previously included also the United States and Spain as the sued parties, but these two countries did not give their approval for the court to consider the case, which automatically led the court to proclaim itself as having no jurisdiction over that part of Serbia's application.
According to the ruling, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (consisting of Serbia and Montenegro at the time) was not a member of the United Nations from September 1991 to 1 November 2000, and thus it was not a party to the ICJ statute. That is why it cannot appear as a party in the action launched before the Court, under its provisions,
Serbia-Montenegro also claimed that it could be a party in the action before the ICJ on the basis of its membership in the UN Convention on genocide, but this was also rejected by the court with the explanation that the ICJ statute took effect in 1946 and the said convention two years later.
Although the ruling was adopted unanimously, its explanation divided 15 ICJ judges who considered the case. Court Vice President Raymond Ranjeva and another six judges added a joint declaration expressing their deep disagreement with the explanation. Judge Abdul Koroma added his own declaration and another four judges expressed their separate positions.
Asked by reporters on the consequences which this ruling may have for the genocide lawsuit which Croatia and Bosnia initiated against Serbia-Montenegro before the same court, the ICJ spokesman Boris Heim said it remained to be seen.
NATO carried out 11-week air strikes in spring 1999 after a Serb crackdown in Kosovo. The alliance explained the reason for the strikes was to stop Belgrade conducting ethnic cleansing of Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanian population. The former Yugoslavia argued the air strikes violated international law.