Top UN court to rule if Serbia guilty of genocide (Alexandra Hudson)

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  By Alexandra Hudson

  Feb. 26, 2007 -- THE HAGUE (Reuters) -- The highest U.N. court is delivering its ruling Monday on whether Serbia committed genocide through the killing, rape and ethnic cleansing that ravaged Bosnia in the 1992-95 war.

  A judgment by the International Court of Justice in favour of Bosnia could allow the country to seek billions of dollars of compensation from its Balkan neighbour.

  Serbia has said such a ruling would prove an unjust and lasting stigma on the state, which overthrew its wartime leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

  In Bosnia, now split between a Muslim-Croat federation and a Serb Republic, sentiment is split along ethnic lines, with Muslims hoping the court will brand Serbia an aggressor.

  As court president Rosalyn Higgins began reading the lengthy judgement in one of the biggest cases in the court's 60-year history, about 50 people demonstrated outside in favour of a genocide verdict.

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