Bosnia submits bid to revise genocide ruling

SARAJEVO: Bosnia formally submitted on Thursday its request for a revision of a UN court ruling that cleared Serbia of blame for genocide, prompting an angry response from Bosnian Serbs who said the move imperilled the country’s postwar settlement.

The ambassadors of major powers, including Russia and the United States, issued a rare joint statement urging all parties in Bosnia to pursue dialogue and avoid any unilateral actions that could exacerbate inter-ethnic tensions.

The 2007 judgment by the International Court of Justice exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for killings, rapes and "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia during the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, though it said Serbia had failed to prevent genocide.

The ICJ ruling concluded that genocide had occurred only at Srebrenica, where about 8,000 Muslims were slaughtered by Bosnian Serb forces, and not in other parts of Bosnia.

The Muslim Bosniak member of Bosnia’s three-man presidency, Bakir Izetbegovic, defended the decision to deliver the request at The Hague against strong opposition from his Serb and Croatian colleagues.

But the Bosnian Serb chair of the presidency, Mladen Ivanic, condemned the move, saying it was now uncertain how the three-member presidency representing Bosnia’s three main ethnic groups could continue to function in the future.  "I fear that we have entered a very serious crisis," he told reporters after the session.