THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Sept 1 (Hina) - Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina had no right to self-determination or establishment of independent states in 1991, a Slovene expert on constitutional rights, Ivan Kristan, said on Monday in
the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague (ICTY).
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, Sept 1 (Hina) - Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-
Herzegovina had no right to self-determination or establishment of
independent states in 1991, a Slovene expert on constitutional
rights, Ivan Kristan, said on Monday in the trial of former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic at the UN war crimes tribunal in The
Hague (ICTY). #L#
Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice asked the witness if there had been any
legal means for Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia to proclaim their right
to self-determination and formation of an independent state.
"No. They could request the realisation of their rights within
Croatia and Bosnia, including autonomy, but borders of the
republics were not to be changed, which the Badinter Commission
also concluded," said Kristan, who drew up a constitutional and
legal analysis of the disintegration of the Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRJ) at the prosecution's request.
A professor at Ljubljana's Law School, Kristan was a judge of the
SFRJ Constitutional Court until the breakdown of the federation in
1991.
Decisions made by the rump SFRJ Presidency in the autumn of 1991
were unconstitutional because four of its members, from Serbia,
Montenegro, Vojvodina and Kosovo, could not represent the entire
presidency and had convened without a quorum, the witness said.
Kristan said that the presidency's decision to impose a state of
direct war threat in October 1991 had no legal grounds.
Commenting on the so-called anti-bureaucratic revolution in Serbia
and Montenegro, Kristan said its purpose had been to destabilise
the republics and provinces, after which Serbia abolished the
status of autonomy for Kosovo and Vojvodina.
The 1990 Serbian Constitution "destabilised the federation's
structure as it abolished the status of autonomous provinces which
was regulated by the SFRJ Constitution", he said.
The Slovene expert also said that the Constitution of the Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia had been adopted in April 1992 by an
incompetent body -- the former SFRJ's federal council.
Proclaiming a continuity between the FRY and SFRJ was illegal
because "this right was not only for Serbia and Montenegro to enjoy,
but also for all republics of the former SFRJ", he added.
Kristan also analysed the dominant influence Milosevic had had in
the three-member Supreme Defence Council, which had made decisions
on army activities during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.
During his cross-examination, Milosevic tried to turn it into a
discussion between two experts on constitutional rights, insisting
on the issues of Kosovo's autonomy, despite judges' warnings that
this was not the subject of the testimony.
Milosevic challenged the witness's credibility by citing Kristan's
articles published in the "Socijalizam" magazine in 1981, in which
the author wrote that Kosovo's request to be proclaimed a state was
"counter-revolutionary".
Milosevic also started a discussion about the non-existence of
equality among peoples during the formation of Yugoslavia after the
First and Second World War, to which Kristan responded by citing
numerous illegal activities which Serbia had resorted to as early
as 1918, from annexing Vojvodina, dethroning Montenegro's King
Nikola, to introducing a unitary state.
Kristan then explained the evolution of the concept of the Yugoslav
federation from the AVNOJ (Anti-fascist council of Yugoslavia) in
1943 to the 1974 Constitution, and concluded that Serbia had
"instigated armed conflicts" in 1991 instead of discussing new
constitutional changes.
(hina) lml sb