The U.N. Security Council 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" until Wednesday after Russia informed council members it would veto the measure.
Supporters of the resolution had been hoping for its unanimous approval to mark the 20th anniversary of the slaughter by Bosnian Serbs of some 8,000 Muslim men and boys who had sought refuge at what was supposed to be a U.N.-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 "no.'
The Serbian and Bosnian Serb governments called emergency sessions for Tuesday evening to discuss the draft resolution but the Bosnian Serb meeting was cancelled.
Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik told local media late 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 Tuesday reiterated its rejection of the British U.N. resolution, but decided 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 aired 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 U.N. Ambassador Mirsada Colakovic told The Associated Press that Russia had informed council members Tuesday morning of its intention to veto.
Council diplomats said U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power, who was a journalist during the Bosnian war, and Russian Ambassador 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 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) Wednesday because of continuing discussions on the text.
Russia has circulated a rival draft resolution which doesn't mention either Srebrenica or genocide, but no vote has been scheduled on it.
Last week, Russia's deputy U.N. ambassador Petr Iliichev called the British draft "divisive," saying the Russian draft is "more general, more reconciling."
Britain's U.N. Ambassador Matthew Rycroft said in a July 2 letter to Mladen Ivanic, the Serb member and current chair of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, that the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia in 2004 and the International Court of Justice in 2007 both determined that 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 deal with individuals, not an entire people, and he insisted that the resolution is not "anti-Serbian" as some have alleged.
___
Associated Press writers Aida Cerkez in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and Jovana Gec in Belgrade contributed to this report.
This content appears as provided to The Globe by the originating wire service. It has not been edited by Globe staff.