Netherlands (AP)- Croatia on Monday accused its Balkan neighbor Serbia of genocide in the early 1990s as the former Yugoslavia shattered in spasms of ethnic violence, in a case at the United Nations' highest court that highlights lingering animosities in the region.

Croatia is asking the ınternational Court of Justice to declare that Serbia breached the 1948 Genocide Convention when forces from the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia attempted to drive Croats out of large swaths of the country after Zagreb declared independence in 1991. ıt also wants the court to order Serbia to pay compensation.

Serbia previously has faced allegations of genocide at the world court.

In a landmark 2007 judgment, the court cleared Belgrade of committing genocide in the 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Muslim men in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica, but said Serbia breached the genocide convention by failing to prevent the slaughter, Europe's worst mass slaying since World War ıı.