Srebrenica genocide deemed a ‘lie’

– The United Nations (UN) Security Council was headed for a showdown yesterday over a British-drafted resolution that aims to mark 20 years since the Srebrenica genocide but faces stiff opposition from Russia.

As Bosnia prepares for sombre national commemorations of the 20th anniversary on Saturday, the 15-member council is to vote on a text that condemns the atrocities at Srebrenica and calls for boosting genocide prevention worldwide.

It remains unclear, however, whether Russia will veto the draft resolution that Moscow’s deputy UN ambassador Petr Iliichev has described as “divisive” and focused on just “one part of the confl ict”.

The disagreement over the UN measure highlighted divisions from the Balkan wars, when Russia defended ethnic Serbs and Serbia, who are fellow Slavs, while western countries supported Bosnian Muslims and Croatia.

The draft resolution has kicked up a storm in the Balkans, where Bosnian Serb leaders have refused to recognise the killing of 8 000 Muslim men and boys in July 1995 as a genocide.

The draft resolution stresses “acceptance of the tragic events at Srebrenica as genocide is a prerequisite for reconciliation” and condemns genocide denial.

Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik has called the Srebrenica genocide a “lie” and accused Britain of trying to “register at the UN, on the basis of false declarations and reports, that a genocide was committed against Muslims”.

“Genocide is a crime and those who committed it are criminals who should be punished as such,” British ambassador Matthew Rycroft wrote in a letter to Mladen Ivanic, the Serb chairperson of the Bosnian presidency.

“To say so it is not ‘anti-Serbian’, as some have alleged.”

In a letter to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Mladic had called the resolution “anti-Serb because it fails to mention in any way the Serb victims of the Srebrenica region”.

Russian diplomats declined to comment on Monday on the vote, amid speculation that Moscow could veto or abstain from endorsing the resolution, the first adopted by the Security Council on the Srebrenica genocide. –