Bosnia will appeal a U.N. court ruling that cleared Serbia of blame for genocide, the Bosniak (Muslim Bosnian) member of the country's presidency said on Friday, a move likely to widen rifts between the ethnic groups which fought the 1992-95 war.

The 2007 judgment by the International Court of Justice exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for killings, rapes and "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, though it said Serbia had failed to prevent genocide.

And while the ICJ ruling concluded that genocide had occurred at Srebrenica, where about 8,000 Muslims were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces, it did not say genocide had happened in other parts of Bosnia.

Bakir Izetbegovic, the Bosniak member of the three-man presidency alongside Serbian and Croatian peers, has engaged a lawyer without his colleagues' consent to prepare the lawsuit ahead of a 10-year deadline on Feb. 26.

"The request for (revision) will be filed next week," Mr Izetbegovic, who heads the largest Bosniak party, SDA, told a news conference after meeting lawyers and war survivors. The goal is to prove that genocide was so widespread that it could not be limited to Srebrenica, he added.