Serbian parliament to mull Srebrenica resolution

BELGRADE, February 8, 2010 (AFP) - Serbia's parliament may adopt a long-awaited resolution condemning the 1995 Srebrenica massacre by early March, the speaker of the assembly said Monday, despite wrangling over the term genocide.

In an interview, Slavica Djukic-Dejanovic told the Blic newspaper that 67 percent of Serbians condemned the atrocity in the Bosnian enclave, when about 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces.

"It is our duty to respect their opinion and adopt a resolution (to condemn the massacre). I think it will be done between now and early March," he said.

He said lawmakers in the pro-European Democratic Party of Serbian President Boris Tadic, which has 78 of 250 seats in parliament and dominates the ruling coalition, were working on the text.

Political parties here have been mulling such a resolution for years, but observers say it now looks closer than ever.

There is still much controversy over the wording of such a resolution and especially the use of the term genocide for the killings.

The opposition nationalists do not want to describe the Srebrenica massacre as genocide, saying it would be tantamount to admitting collective Serb guilt for the crime.

The killings at the end of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia have been qualified as genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN's highest court.

In its ruling, the ICJ did not say Serbia was responsible for the killings in Srebrenica but said it was responsible for doing nothing to try to prevent the massacre.