Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajić announced that Montenegro will vote in the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) for the resolution on Srebrenica, and added that he will submit two amendments to the resolution stating that guilt for genocide is individual and cannot be attributed to any ethnic, religious or other group.
“We will vote for this as well as all resolutions that condemn genocide. We are one hundred percent in agreement with the foreign policy of the European Union (EU),” Spajić said.
Spajić pointed out that based on the proposed amendments, no one can say that Montenegro condemns the Serbian people, Serbia or Republika Srpska.
“Serbs in Montenegro make up a significant percentage of our population and we must never ignore that. For us, Serbs are not and cannot be a genocidal nation. That does not exist. No nation is genocidal,” Spajić wrote on the X social network.
The resolution recalling the genocide against the Bosniaks of Srebrenica, committed in July 1995, should be presented at the session of the United Nations General Assembly in May.
The most influential Western countries and significant Islamic countries signed up as sponsors of the resolution, and Slovenia and North Macedonia are its sponsors among the countries of the Southeast European region.
The resolution calls for July 11 to be established as an international day of remembrance for the victims of the genocide in Srebrenica, once again condemns all actions that glorify the perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide determined by the judgments of international courts, emphasizes the importance of completing the search for the remains of the remaining victims which have not been found so far and calls for the continuation of the prosecution of the perpetrators of genocide who are still at large.
The Secretary General of the UN is being asked to establish an information program called “Genocide in Srebrenica and the United Nations”, which should be implemented already before next year, when the 30th anniversary of that crime is celebrated.
The resolution intends to call on all states to fully comply with their obligations under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, respect international customary law on the prevention and punishment of genocide, and respect the relevant decisions of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
Serbia strongly opposes the adoption of the resolution and is taking measures to convince as many UN members as possible to at least abstain from voting at the General Assembly.
Former Serbian head of diplomacy and current minister of the interior, Ivica Dacic, believes that Montenegro’s decision to vote for the UN resolution on the genocide in Srebrenica is “shameful and outrageous”.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić and Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik insist that this resolution is an attempt to impose collective guilt on the Serbian people and insist that there was no genocide in Srebrenica, even though this was confirmed by the judgments of the Hague Tribunal.
In July 1995, after the occupation of Srebrenica, which was declared a zone under UN protection, members of the RS army and police systematically and systematically killed more than eight thousand Bosniak men and boys, while they expelled women and children from the enclave.
The wartime political and military leaders of the RS, Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić, were sentenced to life imprisonment for planning and carrying out the genocide in Srebrenica, Fena news agency writes.