Russia on Wednesday vetoed a draft UN resolution recognising the Srebrenica massacre as genocide, branding the measure "confrontational" and a setback to reconciliation in the Balkans. Britain had put forward the text, hoping the Security Council would formally recognize Europe's worst atrocity since World War II as an act of genocide for the first time and condemn genocide denial.
Angola, China, Nigeria and Venezuela abstained from the vote held just days before Bosnia is due to mark the 20th anniversary of the mass murder of 8,000 Muslim boys and men by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995. Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin slammed the draft resolution as "not constructive, confrontational and politically motivated" and argued that it unfairly singled out Bosnian Serbs for war crimes.
"The draft that we have in front of us will not help peace in the Balkans but rather doom this region to tension," Churkin told the council meeting that began with a minute of silence to remember the victims. British Deputy Ambassador Peter Wilson accused Russia of siding "with those who are unwilling to accept the facts today." "Genocide occurred at Srebrenica. This is a legal fact, not a political judgement. On this there is no compromise," he said.
Britain, Russia and the United States had been locked in intense negotiations over the past 24 hours to try to avoid a veto and agree on a text. But Moscow refused to drop its insistence that references to the Srebrenica killings as an act of genocide be scrapped, diplomats said. Bosnian Serb leaders had called on Russia to use its veto power to block the resolution, arguing that it was "anti-Serb" because it highlighted the killings in the town in the final months of the war.
Serbia's President Tomislav Nikolic proclaimed "this is a great day for Serbia" after the Russian veto which he said had prevented the "stigmatisation of the entire Serbian people." In his statement to the council, Churkin argued that "hundreds of thousands of Serbs" lost their homes in the war and had "suffered as much as the others, if not more." The envoy maintained that revisiting the Srebrenica massacre should be left to historians and that the Security Council should focus instead on current conflicts.
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