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5 June 2012

EU Rejects Nikolic's Denial of Srebrenica Genocide

The European Union has declared that it would not tolerate attempts to nagate the genocide of Muslims at Srebrenica, replying to a recent statement on behalf of newly elected Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic.

On Friday, Nikolic stated that the notorious 1995 massacre of 8 000 Bosnian Muslims in the town of Srebrenica was not genocide but the killings amounted to "grave war crimes."

On Monday, European Commission spokeswoman Pia Ahrenkilde said that "the European Union strongly rejects any intention to rewrite history."

She reminded that the act of genocide had been confirmed by both the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice.

A first meeting between the Nikolic and EU Commission president, Jose Manuel Barroso will take place on June 14 in Brussels. Serbia has been officially a candidate to join the bloc since March.

About 8 000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in a matter of days after Bosnian Serb troops overran the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica in Bosnia in July 1995 in what was the gravest atrocity in Europe since World War II.