Serbia president 'apologises' for massacre
Tomislav Nikolic seeks forgiveness for 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8,000
Muslims, but stops short of calling it genocide
Last Modified: 25 Apr 2013 17:57
Serbia's nationalist President Tomislav Nikolic has
personally apologised for the first time for the 1995 Srebrenica
massacre of 8,000 Muslims, but stopped short of calling it genocide.
"I
kneel and ask for forgiveness for Serbia for the crime committed in
Srebrenica," Nikolic said on Thursday in an interview to be aired on
Bosnian national television parts of which have been released onYou Tube.
"I apologise for the crimes committed by any individual in the name of our
state and our people," he said in the interview.
Nikolic's office confirmed to AFP news agency the authenticity of the statement.
Al
Jazeera's Aljosa Milenkovic, reporting from Belgrade, said: "May be it
is sounding like a small political earthquake here in Balkans as
President Nikolic is apologising for crimes committed by the Serbs
during the 1990s violent breakup of Yugoslavia."
"But when one reads more into the interview he still did not recognise what
happened at Srebrenica as genocide."
Thousands of Bosnians, mostly Muslims, were killed by Serb soldiers during the
Balkan War between 1992 and 1996.
After being elected last May, Nikolic caused a stir in the region by
refusing to acknowledge that the massacre in the Bosnian enclave, was a
genocide, despite it being ruled as such by two international courts.
Nikolic at the time said "there was no genocide in Srebrenica".
War crimes trial
Until five years ago Nikolic was a top official of the
ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party, which has denied that Serb
forces committed crimes during the Balkans wars.
Its leader
Vojislav Seselj is currently on trial for war crimes before The
Hague-based UN International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia
(ICTY).
While this marks Nikolic's first apology on Srebrenica, Serbia has in the past
expressed regret over the deaths.
In 2010, the Serbian parliament passed an historic declaration
condemning the Srebrenica massacre in a gesture ending years of denial
by Serbian politicians about the scale of the killings, but Nikolic at
the time did not support the move.
Nikolic's predecessor Boris Tadic also apologised to Srebrenica victims during
a commemoration event in 2005.
Both the ICTY and the United Nations' highest court, the
International Court of Justice, have found that the Srebrenica massacre
was a genocide.
Bosnian Serb wartime political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic
and Ratko Mladic are currently on trial on genocide charges before the
ICTY for their role in the massacre.
Source:
Al Jazeera And Agencies
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
------------------------------------
Post message: [email protected]
Subscribe : [email protected]
Unsubscribe : [email protected]
List owner : [email protected]
Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/
<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
[email protected]
[email protected]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[email protected]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
