Anger As Serbia Becomes Rights Watchdog

Well you couldn't make this up Part 1.....

Taken from The Times, UK, May 12, 2007
By Richard Beeston

Serbia took over the chairmanship of the Council of Europe yesterday, raising concerns that the Continent’s main human rights watchdog will be led by a country with a decidedly chequered past.

Despite disquiet among some Western European countries, Serbia took up the chairmanship unopposed. Vuk Draskovic, the Serbian Foreign Minister, will chair the council’s committee of ministers, the main decision-making body. The post is rotated every six months among the 47 member states in alphabetical order.

The move came as Serbian pro-democracy parties negotiated a new coalition government, so preventing the feared resurgence of ultranationalist parties loyal to late leader Slobodan Milosevic.

Nevertheless, the appointment remained controversial, with worries that a Serbian chairmanship would diminish the standing of the Council of Europe, which is supposed to uphold rights across the Continent.

The main charge against Belgrade is that it has failed over the past decade to cooperate fully with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which is responsible for trying war crimes suspects from the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Belgrade has been accused of shielding Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, and General Ratko Mladic, his military commander, who was indicted on charges of genocide for ordering the murder of more than 7,000 men and boys from the town of Srebrenica. Only three months ago Serbia was found to have breached the Convention on Genocide by failing to apprehend General Mladic.

Carla Del Ponte, prosecutor for the tribunal, wrote to the Council of Europe that it was “rather embarrassing that a state which is harbouring these fugitives” should preside over it.

Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have also written to Belgrade demanding that the Serbian authorities uphold the commitments that they made on joining the Council of Europe in 2003.

“Serbia is the only country ever judged to have violated the Genocide Convention, and it’s persisting in that violation by not turning over Ratko Mladic,” said Richard Dicker, director of the International Justice Programme of Human Rights Watch.

Terry Davis, Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, defended Serbia’s chairmanship, insisting that it was the right of all member states to have their turn at running the organisation.

“The real question is, should Serbia be a member of the Council of Europe? I say yes,” he said.