BELGRADE - Bosnian Muslim leader Bakir Izetbegovic publicly upbraided Serbia's nationalist president on Tuesday, saying he must face the truth of Srebrenica and the siege of Sarajevo before the region can move on.
A disciple of the Greater Serbia ideology that fuelled the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, President Tomislav Nikolic's interpretations of what happened then have raised hackles in the Western Balkans since he took power almost a year ago.
His remarks, including a denial that the 1995 massacre of 8 000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica amounted to genocide, have set back efforts to reconcile the ex-Yugoslav republics, a prerequisite of stability and economic cooperation as they each strive to join the European Union.
Addressing a joint news conference with Izetbegovic, Nikolic said Bosnia's 1992-95 war had ended “long ago” and that wounds should heal. “We agreed that between us there will be no more disagreements or misunderstandings,” he said.
Izetbegovic, the son of Bosnia's wartime leader Alija Izetbegovic, issued a scathing riposte:
“Fifteen, twenty years ago, so not in the so distant past, we had a war, which did not come from Bosnia,” he said.
“To move forward, we will have to stop for a moment, turn around and look into the past, at what happened in Srebrenica,” he said. “It happened 8 372 times. Not a single hostage got out alive; children of 13, 14 years old. One must face up to this.”
It was Izetbegovic's first official visit to Belgrade and first meeting with Nikolic. The Bosnian Muslim leader had said this month he would make the trip to warn Nikolic of the consequences of his rhetoric.
“In a 42-month siege, through three cold winters and around 1 000 shells per day, every third Sarajevan was wounded and every tenth died. One must face up to this,” Izetbegovic added.
“We don't seek revenge, but we ask for the truth to be looked upon and for words to be chosen carefully when it is talked about.”
Nikolic last year disputed a United Nations court ruling that the Srebrenica massacre constituted genocide; he described the Croatian border town of Vukovar - reduced to rubble by Serb forces in 1991 - as a “Serb town”; and this month he said Bosnia's autonomous Serb entity was the second “Serb state” in the Balkans.
Izetbegovic responded: “There is only one state, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the Balkans, there are not two Serb states. Those are facts. That's it, and that's how it will remain.”
Nikolic's remarks have jarred with the Serbian government's official policy of closer regional cooperation and integration with the West. Serbia edged closer to EU membership talks last week with an historic accord to settle relations with its former province of Kosovo.
Bosnia, however, continues to flounder, its progress stifled by rivalry between leaders of the country's Muslim (Bosniak), Serb and Croat communities. The country has yet to apply for membership of the EU.
Izetbegovic is the Bosniak member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, an institution that emerged from the peace deal that ended the Bosnian war and set up a precarious system of power-sharing between Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats.
Around 100,000 people died in the war, in which Serb forces, armed with the big guns of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, seized swathes of Bosnia in a bid to carve out an ethnically pure Serb state.
Many Serbs continue to deny the crimes committed in their name and say they have been unfairly portrayed as the guilty party. Nikolic was a member of the extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party, but broke away in 2008, setting up his own party to pursue a pro-EU policy.
Izetbegovic was accompanied on Tuesday by the Serb member of the Bosnian presidency, Nebojsa Radmanovic.
It was planned as the first visit to Belgrade since the war by all three members of the presidency, until the Croat representative, Zeljko Komsic, pulled out earlier this month, accusing Nikolic of meddling in Bosnia's internal affairs. - Reuters