THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, March 31 (Hina) - The former Dutch ambassador to Belgrade, Johanes Fitelars, stuck to his opinion as a witness in the trial of Yugoslav army general Pavle Strugar before the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague on
Wednesday that there had been no Croatian forces in Dubrovnik's Old Town in the autumn of 1991 despite attempts by the defence to prove the opposite.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, March 31 (Hina) - The former Dutch ambassador to
Belgrade, Johanes Fitelars, stuck to his opinion as a witness in the
trial of Yugoslav army general Pavle Strugar before the UN war crimes
tribunal in The Hague on Wednesday that there had been no Croatian
forces in Dubrovnik's Old Town in the autumn of 1991 despite attempts
by the defence to prove the opposite.#L#
"We saw no military activity," Fitelars said during a
cross-examination in which the defence tried to discredit him as a
biased witness.
Fitelars visited Dubrovnik on 29 October 1991 along with other
European ambassadors accredited in Belgrade, and was told by
representatives of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) that their forces
were not shelling Dubrovnik but were only responding to acts of
provocation by Croatian irregular forces.
In the autumn of 1991 European diplomats called in vain on the JNA
leadership to stop shelling Dubrovnik and lift the siege of the city.
Fitelars reiterated that several times at the end of October 1991 he
had conveyed the concern of the then European Community to top JNA
commanders about the unjustified shelling of Dubrovnik, which was
listed by UNESCO as a world cultural heritage site.
(Hina) vm sb