Serbia disputes UN draft on Bosnia massacre says it was not genocide

(MENAFN- Arab News) BELGRADE/SARAJEVO: Serbia warned that a resolution commemorating the 1995 Srebrenica massacre which the United Nations Security Council is due to discuss on Tuesday would only widen ethnic divides in neighboring Bosnia.

The British-drafted resolution condemns what it describes as the genocide at Srebrenica and any denial of the genocide. That has angered Serbia and Bosnian Serbs who have branded it as 'anti-Serb' and sent a letter of protest to the United Nations.
On July 11 1995 toward the end of Bosnia's 1992-95 war Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern enclave of Srebrenica a UN-designated 'safe area.' Some 8000 Muslim men and boys were killed in the days that followed. The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has called the killings genocide. The Serbs acknowledge that a 'grave crime' took place at Srebrenica but reject the genocide label.
The row over the resolution has created an atmosphere of distrust in Bosnia and overshadowed the Srebrenica commemoration scheduled for Saturday when 136 newly identified victims will be laid to rest next to the 6241 already buried at a joint cemetery.
Twenty years after a US-brokered 'Dayton peace accord' ended the war Bosnia remains fragile with a weak economy an unwieldy power-sharing system and tensions between its two regions the Bosniak-Croat Federation and the Serb Republic.
The president of the Bosnian Serb Republic Milorad Dodik who has long called for its secession from Bosnia has warned that the adoption of the resolution would mean a 'disintegration of Bosnia'.
Britain says the resolution should encourage reconciliation among Bosnia's Serbs Croats and Muslim Bosniaks. It has changed the draft several times after Russia historically an ally of Serbia submitted its own text it considered more balanced.