Serbia said on Wednesday it would respond to Croatia’s genocide claims at the highest court of international law with a counter-lawsuit over one of the largest alleged “ethnic cleansing” actions of the 1990s Yugoslav wars.

Belgrade aims to turn the spotlight at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) onto the mass flight of ethnic Serbs during Croatia’s “Operation Storm” in 1995, rather than just the Serb atrocities against Croats four years earlier, said Vuk Jeremic, Serbia’s foreign minister.