Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik in remarks published Tuesday claimed that the 1995 killings in Srebenica was not genocide and also that the number of victims was lower than reported.
"We cannot and will enver accept to qualify that event as genocide," Dodik, the premier of the Serbian part of Bosnia, told the Belgrade newspaper Vecernje Novosti, DPA reported.
He insisted that the number of Muslim boys and men killed by Serb forces at Srebrenica in July 1995, estimated at around 8,000, was "manipulated."
"We already established that 500 people from the list (of victims) is alive and more than 250 of those buried in (the memorial cemetery) Potocari have not even been killed in Srebrenica," he said, negating a verdict by the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ).
His comments run contrary to what the Hague-based ICJ ruled in 2007 when it said that actions by Serb forces there were "committed with the specific intent to destroy in part the group of the Muslims of Bosnia and ... were acts of genocide."
The UN war crimes tribunal for former Yugoslavia has charged the commander of the Bosnian Serb forces, Ratko Mladic, with genocide for Srebrenica and the shelling of Sarajevo during the 1992-95 war.
Mladic however remains at large, hiding somewhere in Serbia.
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