Djuric: Srebrenica resolution diplomatic ambush for Serbia

BELGRADE - Serbian FM Marko Djuric said on Tuesday a draft UN General Assembly resolution on Srebrenica was a "diplomatic ambush" for Serbia and that its likely adoption would be a precedent, but that it would not be adopted unanimously as many countries would oppose it.

In an interview with Tanjug, Djuric said a Serbian team led by President Aleksandar Vucic had worked day and night to keep the resolution from being adopted and to, at least, ensure all 192 UN member states heard Serbia's arguments.

"Indeed, they have heard about a part of our trouble, a part of our history, as well as legal arguments. Because this (the draft resolution) violates Article 12 of the UN Charter, which stipulates that, for example, the General Assembly should not decide on affairs that are still before the Security Council, and the issue of Bosnia and Herzegovina is still before the Security Council. A session on Bosnia and Herzegovina will be held tomorrow. So how can, then, the General Assembly decide on the topic?" Djuric said.

He said Serbia had taken diplomatic action as soon as the resolution had been tabled.

"We started dispatching our special envoys to some of our traditional friends, who are Serbia's comparative advantage relative to many other European countries, because we maintain really excellent relations with many African, Latin American and Asian countries that we helped during their struggles for independence, their anticolonial struggles," Djuric said.

Many of them still remember that support, he said.

"They know Serbia is a country that stands by the positions of international law in a principled manner, not just for its own sake or because of its Kosovo-Metohija issue, for example. It equally opposes political abuse and instrumentalisation of sensitive issues such as the issue of war crimes," Djuric said.

He noted that, even within Bosnia and Herzegovina, there was no consensus on the draft resolution and that there had been no regional consultations or consultations with Serbia before it had been proposed.

"We will not let the Serbs and Serbia be stigmatised as genocidal. That is absolutely unacceptable. This (the Serbs) is a much-suffering nation that lost a third of its population fighting for the Allied cause in WWI and over one million lives in WWII as the pillar of the fight against Nazism and Fascism in this part of the world," Djuric noted.