BELGRADE - Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic and representatives of the Coordination of the Serbian Associations of Families of Missing Persons from the Territory of Former Yugoslavia agreed Wednesday that it was necessary to adopt a systemic approach to resolving the issue of search for the Serbs who went missing during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in 1990s.

The representatives of families of missing persons spoke to Nikolic about problems they faced in attempts to determine the fate of their loved ones, the president’s press office said in a release.

The delegation of the Coordination pointed out that the number of missing Serbs had not been properly established even after 15 years since the end of the wars and that in all save a few cases of crimes against the Serbs, those responsible had never been brought to justice and punished.

The court proceedings for crimes against Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) have not been conducted the right way, and the perpetrators were being sentenced to incredibly short prison terms or set free, the delegation said.

They pointed out that even after June 10, 1999, when the interim UN administration was set up in Kosovo, those responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Serbs in the southern Serbian province during the 1998-99 conflict had not even been prosecuted, a “further humiliation of the victims, their families and justice.”

They stressed that it was a shame that the Republic of Serbia’s Special Court for War Crimes had passed a total of only 15 years in prison on those who had planned and perpetrated crimes against Serbs.

President Nikolic and the delegation agreed that the issue of missing persons should be regulated by law and that a memorial should be erected in memory of all innocent Serb victims of the wars from 1991 to 2000.

A total of 11,175 missing persons, including about 3,700 Serbs, are still being searched for on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. The search is ongoing for at least 1,900 Serbs and close to 400 members of the former Yugoslav People’s Army in Croatia, 1,700 Serbs and another 95 Serbian citizens in BiH and 530 Serbs in Kosovo.