Fears of a new political crisis in the Balkans are growing after Bosnia-Herzegovina said it would appeal against a UN court ruling clearing Serbia of genocide during Bosnia’s civil war.

Ivica Dačić, Serbia’s foreign minister, has become the latest voice to express concern. He told Serbian state TV that the move, announced by Bakir Izetbegović, the Muslim member of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, was “very dangerous”.

Sarajevo’s decision could jeopardise both regional stability and bilateral ties between Serbia and Bosnia, a country that remains deeply divided along ethnic lines since the 1992-1995 war. “This decision could cause destabilisation of not only Bosnia-Herzegovina but the entire region,” Dačić said.

Izetbegović said on Friday that Bosnia would ask the international court of justice to reconsider its 2007 ruling next week, just a few days before the 10-year deadline expires.

In the original case launched in 1993 by Bosnia’s then Muslim-dominated government, Sarajevo accused Belgrade of masterminding a genocide through widespread “ethnic cleansing” during the war that killed more than 100,000.

The Hague-based ICJ found only one act of genocide – the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim males by Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica – and said there was not enough evidence to suggest Belgrade was directly responsible.

But it did find Serbia, which politically and militarily backed the Bosnian Serbs, had breached international law over the Srebrenica slaughter.

“Everyone needs the truth, even those who oppose it, a truth that will be written by international judges, experienced and impartial,” Izetbegović said after meeting about 50 Bosnian Muslim politicians, legal experts and representatives of war victims’ associations.

“We are interested in the truth and the process of reconciliation based on the truth,” Izetbegović said, adding that the goal of the appeal was to prove that genocide was so widespread that it could not be limited only to Srebrenica.



Bosnian Serb officials said such a request could not be made without consensus within the tripartite presidency, but Izetbegović insisted it could, and said it would be done by a lawyer the presidency appointed in 2002.

Bosnia’s legal team has “new arguments”, notably those presented during the trial of the Bosnian Serb wartime army chief, Ratko Mladić, who is awaiting judgment at war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Izetbegović said.

Mladić is accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and two counts of genocide. One is for the siege of Sarajevo, where his troops ringed the city for 46 months, subjecting its residents to relentless shelling and sniping.

The other is for the slaughter in Srebrenica, Europe’s worst single atrocity since the second world war, where most of the men and boys were taken away in buses after the supposedly UN-protected enclave fell to Mladić’s troops. They were lined up and shot, and their bodies dumped in mass graves.

The Serbian prime minister, Aleksandar Vučić, labelled Dačić’s decision “difficult and bad” for ties between the two neighbouring countries.

“Despite everything, I’m convinced that we will manage to preserve our national interests,” Vučić was quoted as saying by the Blic newspaper’s online edition. “However, we will continue to talk with Bosnian officials, wishing to assure a lasting peace in the Balkans.”

The Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, called on ethnic Serb politicians to “challenge the legitimacy” of the demand for revision with the ICJ.

On Tuesday the Bosnian presidency’s Serb chairman, Mladen Ivanić, said that an appeal would violate the country’s constitution and further widen divisions among the rival ethnic groups. He said it would “threaten peace and stability in Bosnia”. Bosnian Serb MPs plan to boycott parliament to show their opposition.

Since the war ended, Bosnia has consisted of two semi-independent entities: the Serbs’ Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The two are linked by weak joint institutions.