Resolution condemning the 1995 massacre during the Bosnian war is delayed as Serbian PM says draft ‘pushed us into the trenches of hatred’

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

The UN security council has delayed a vote on a British-drafted resolution that would condemn the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica during the Bosnian war as “a crime of genocide” after Russia informed council members it would veto the measure.

Supporters of the resolution had been hoping for its unanimous approval on Wednesday to mark the 20th anniversary of the slaughter by Bosnian Serbs of 8,000 Muslim men and boys who had sought refuge at what was supposed to be a UN-protected site. But leaders of the Bosnian Serbs and Serbia, who have close religious and cultural ties to Russia, have lobbied President Vladimir Putin to vote against it.

How Britain and the US decided to abandon Srebrenica to its fate Read more

The Serbian and Bosnian Serb governments had called emergency sessions for Tuesday evening to discuss the draft resolution but the Bosnian Serb meeting was cancelled.

The Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik told local media late on Tuesday: “The text of the resolution is so fundamentally bad, that it cannot be corrected. Russia is acting in accordance with the talks we had with them.”

The Serbian government at its emergency session late on Tuesday reiterated its rejection of the British UN resolution, but decided that the prime minister, Aleksandar Vucic, would attend Srebrenica memorial ceremonies in a show of readiness to honour the victims and put the war past behind.

“I will represent a Serbia that is capable of admitting that certain individuals had committed crimes,” Vucic said at a news conference broadcast live on state television. “We must do that for our own sake.” However, he said, “there is no collective guilt”.

Vucic said the British resolution opened fresh divisions and “pushed us into the trenches of hatred”.

Bosnia’s UN ambassador, Mirsada Colakovic, said Russia had informed council members on Tuesday morning of its intention to veto.

Council diplomats said the US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, who was a journalist during the Bosnian war, and Russian envoy Vitaly Churkin were meeting, along with British diplomats, to discuss differences on the text.

The council vote, originally scheduled for Tuesday morning, was delayed until the afternoon and then postponed until 2pm (GMT) on Wednesday because of continuing discussions on the text.

Russia has circulated a rival draft resolution which does not mention either Srebrenica or genocide, but no vote has been scheduled on it.

Last week, Russia’s deputy UN ambassador Petr Iliichev called the British draft “divisive”, saying the Russian draft was “more general, more reconciling”.

Britain’s UN ambassador, Matthew Rycroft, said in a letter on 2 July to Mladen Ivanic, the Serb member and chair of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, that the international criminal tribunal for former Yugoslavia in 2004 and the international court of justice in 2007 determined the mass killings at Srebrenica were an act of genocide.

“That is not a political statement. It is a legal fact,” Rycroft wrote. “What happened in Srebrenica was the worst single crime in Europe since the second world war.”

He stressed that any judgment of genocide dealt with individuals, not an entire people, and he insisted the resolution was not “anti-Serbian”, as some have alleged.