[JURIST] The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled Wednesday that it could not hear a case brought by Serbia and Montenegro against eight NATO countries – Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Canada, the Netherlands and Portugal – in respect of NATO's 1999 bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, then led by President Slobodan Milsoevic, now on trial at The Hague for war crimes. The NATO campaign was undertaken in support of a NATO effort to push the Yugoslav army out of Kosovo, where it was said to be engaged in ethnic cleansing operations against Kosovar Albanians. The court said it had no jurisdiction in the case because the antecedent state of Yugoslavia was not an official UN member in 1999 and was not party to the ICJ statute. The court's ruling is not yet available online. Background material on the litigation is available on the ICJ docket list here. Reuters has more.