The International Court of Justice's (ICJ) judge Peter Tomka began reading the verdict on the Balkan genocide at the tribunal's headquarters in The Hague's Peace Palace at 10 a.m. local time on Tuesday.

Judge Tomka, currently the ICJ president, said both Zagreb and Belgrade had committed many crimes during the conflict, but the intention of "destroying a population in whole or in part" - which defines a genocide - had not been proven against either country.

"Croatia has failed to substantiate its claim that genocide was committed" by Serbia, Tomka said as he read the verdict in the landmark case. The 17-judge bench also ruled that Serb forces had not intended to "destroy" the Croatian ethnic group in areas of Croatia claimed by Serb secessionists, but were trying to "move them by force."

"Serbia has failed to prove an act of genocide... committed against the Serb population in Croatia," Tomka said of Serbia's accusations against Croatia.

Allegations of ethnic cleansing

The ruling was set to end a 16-year-old process in which Croatia and Serbia both accused each other for acts committed during the civil war following the breakdown of the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

Zagreb launched the court process in 1999, accusing Serbia of a campaign of ethnic cleansing and demanding compensation for the conflict from 1991-1995, in which more than 13,500 Croats were killed and tens of thousands others wounded or displaced.

In 2008, the international court ruled that Serbia could be charged as the successor of Yugoslavia, following which Belgrade accused Croatia of a similar genocide of the Serb people. According to Belgrade's claims, Zagreb's counteroffensive, called Operation Storm, led to the death of 6,500 Serbs; 200,000 were forced to flee Croatia.

A chance to forget the past?

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic described the judgment as one of the most important events for Serbia's bilateral relations with Croatia. "Maybe we'll have an opportunity to leave the past behind and turn towards the future," he added.

The International Court of Justice - the only international court which hears cases between two countries - has only heard one other genocide case: on the massacre of 8,000 Muslim boys and men by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica in July 1995.

The case also involved separate genocide charges brought against Serb leaders at the UN war crimes tribunal.

mg/msh (dpa, AFP)