Bosnia: Serb leader Dodik denies Srebrenica genocide against Muslims

Belgrade, 1 Feb. (AKI) - Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik on Wednesday denied that Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995 when up to 8,000 Muslims were killed, but conceded a “grave crime was committed”.

In a television duel with Cedomir Jovanovic, the leader of Serbia’s Liberal Democratic Party, carried by Belgrade television B92, Dodik said all three ethnic groups in Bosnia - Muslims, Serbs and Croats committed crimes during 1992-1995 war, but it couldn’t be qualified as genocide.

The broadcast was organized by Serbian news agency Tanjug, after Jovanovic’s statement that Bosnian Serb entity Republika Srpska (RS) was created on genocide, which provoked a storm of protests among Bosnian Serbs.

“The RS isn’t a genocidal creation and not everything can be reduced to Srebrenica,” Dodik, who is RS president, said. “I deem that the qualification of genocide is untenable, I believe it didn’t happen,” he added.

Dodik said Bosnian Serbs fought in the war only to save themselves from majority Muslims’ domination. “I don’t agree that there was genocide, because there was no decision to destroy one ethnic group,” he added.

Reminded by Jovanovic that the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal sentenced Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic to 46 years in jail for Srebrenica massacre, qualifying it as “genocide”, Dodik said it was tribunal’s opinion which he didn’t share.

Reminding that “3,500 Serbs were killed in Srebrenica” by Muslim forces before 1995, Dodik said that “members of all three ethnic groups were killed in the war, but crimes were also committed by all”.

Dodik said that the capital Sarajevo was ethnically cleansed from Serbs and that Bosnia would “one day fall apart” like happened with Czechoslovakia. “Sarajevo isn’t my capital, I go there only when I have to,” he added.

Jovanovic is the only Serbian political leader that blames Serbs for war crimes and advocates independence of Kosovo, declared by majority Albanians in 2008. Asked by Dodik why the international community doesn’t allow the RS to secede from Bosnia like Kosovo did from Serbia, Jovanovic said it was another matter.

“Kosovo is independent with, or without you,” he said. Serbia should face the new reality and base on it its relations with Kosovo and Bosnia, Jovanovic concluded.