Serbia ponders resolution to condemn Srebrenica massacre

Parties split on exact definition of 1995 atrocities which killed some 8,000

BELGRADE (AFP) – Serbia’s parliament may adopt a long-awaited resolution condemning the 1995 Srebrenica massacre by early March, its speaker said yesterday, but debate is raging over whether to use the term genocide.

In an interview, Slavica Djukic-Dejanovic told the Blic newspaper that 67 percent of Serbians condemned the atrocity in the Bosnian enclave, when about 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces.

“It is our duty to respect their opinion and adopt a resolution [to condemn the massacre],” she said. “I think it will be done between now and early March,” she said.

Serbia’s political parties have been trying for years to find a compromise that would allow them to adopt a resolution condemning the massacre.

The issue has assumed increased urgency since Belgrade applied in December to join the European Union, which sees such a resolution as promoting regional reconciliation.

Previous attempts to pass a text – in 2005 on the 10th anniversary of the slaughter and in 2007 after the UN’s highest court ruled Srebrenica a genocide – failed amid fierce opposition from nationalist parties who sought to play down crimes committed in the eastern Bosnian town.

The Srebrenica massacre is the only episode in Bosnia’s bloody 1992-95 war to have been ruled as genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In their ruling, ICJ judges cleared Serbia of responsibility for the actual killings themselves but said Belgrade was responsible for doing nothing to try to prevent the massacre.

The parliament speaker said lawmakers in the pro-European Democratic Party (DS) of President Boris Tadic, which has 78 of 250 seats and dominates the ruling coalition, were working on the text.

The opposition nationalists do not want to describe the Srebrenica massacre as genocide, saying it would be tantamount to admitting collective Serb guilt for the crime.

There is also resistance to such wording within the coalition itself.

“I don’t have any information on whether the DS insists on using the term ‘genocide’... for the moment, my party’s position is that the term ‘crime’ is satisfactory,” said Djukic-Dejanovic, who belongs to the coalition Socialist Party (SPS).

The nationalist Serbian Democratic Party (DSS) of former Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica says describing Srebrenica as genocide would be calling “the entire Serbian people perpetrators of genocide.” The nationalist Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) supports a Srebrenica resolution in principle but wants similar text condemning crimes committed against Serbs during the conflicts that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.

“Of course it is essential to condemn the crimes committed against our people, but we are ready to talk because it is important to find a large consensus on the subject,” Aleksandar Vucic, the SNS’s number two, has said.

On the opposite side of the political spectrum, the liberal opposition has said it will only vote in favor of the Srebrenica resolution if it includes the term genocide.