Dodik suggests apology to families of Bosnian war victims (Extra)

Feb 26, 2007, 16:47 GMT

Banja Luka - Premier of Bosnian Serb entity, the Srpska Republic, Milorad Dodik, said Monday in Banja Luka that Bosnian Serb institutions should apologize to families of the victims killed by Bosnian Serb troops during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Someone, he said, should also make the same apology to Bosnian Serbs killed during the war in Bosnia, referring to other two Bosnia's ethnic peoples - Muslims and Croats.

Dodik's reaction followed the verdict of The Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) which said Serbia, which supported Bosnian Serbs during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia, was not directly responsible for acts of genocide committed during the war, but was responsible for violation of the international convention on genocide.

Dodik also commented on the massacre in the former eastern Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, where Bosnian Serb troops backed by Serbian paramilitary forces, killed up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men after capturing the area on 11 July 1995.

The Srebrenica massacre, as he said at a press conference in Banja Luka, was 'a horrible crime,' and all those responsible for what happened there must face justice.

Dodik rejected any responsibility of the Srpska Republic, its institutions and its people for the Srebrenica massacre, stressing the crime was committed by individuals who must be punished.

The massacre in Srebrenica, he said, cannot be qualified as 'genocide,' since all material evidence proved that the committed crime was not planned and that the ICJ simply took over some fragments about the massacre from some previous verdicts of The Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal.

Stressing he considered the case of Bosnia versus Serbia before the ICJ 'illegal and illegitimate,' Dodik called on all the parties in the country for further cooperation in building a better future.

'Everyone in Bosnia should stop with aspirations about the guilt (in the past), and should focus on how to go further on,' said Dodik.