PARIS, July 12. /TASS/. France condemns the attack on Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic in Srebrenica, who had arrived there to commemorate victims of the Srebrenica massacre, France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Sunday.
"France condemns the incidents during the ceremony in Srebrenica," the foreign minister said in a statement. "Those events were to offer an opportunity for concord between people, not to stir the past pains. France is calling on people and governments of the region’s countries to turn eyes on future."
On Saturday, reports came saying as Vucic was laying flowers at the Potochari memorial, a chanting Allahu Akbar crowd started hurling stones and bottles filled with water at the Serbian prime minister. A stone hit his head breaking eyeglasses. Witnesses said the Serbian delegation had to make a quick retreat to the cars and to leave the memorial.
Dozens of thousands of people took part in the commemorative events. Serbia’s Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, Slovenian President Borut Pahor and other high-ranking officials and diplomats had arrived to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the events where 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed.
Media said that in the run-up to his trip to Srebrenica, Serbia’s prime minister said: "Serbia clearly and unequivocally condemns horrible crimes committed in Srebrenica 20 years ago."
"Twenty years have passed since these gruesome crimes in Srebrenica were committed and no words can be found to express the sorrow and grief over the dead," Vucic said. "It is our common future and it must not be sacrificed because of personal or ethnic egotism."
On July 11, 1995, the Bosnian Serbs’ forces killed around 8,000 boys and men of the Muslim enclave. Serbia without denying the crime says that it was made in response to deliberate slaughters of the Serbs by Islamic extremists.
At least 100,000 people were killed in the 1992-1995 Bosnian war, with the Srebrenica massacre recognised as the most tragic moment of the conflict.
On April 19, 2004, international justice determined the Srebrenica events as genocide , and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague sentenced General Radislav Krstic.
On February 26, 2007 the International Court of Justice - the UN main judicial body - recognised the Muslin massacre as genocide.
Earlier this week, Russia vetoed the British-proposed draft resolution on Srebrenica at the UN Security Council. Ten countries voted for the draft. Another four (Angola, Venezuela, China and Nigeria) abstained from voting. The draft resolution characterised the murder of about 8,000 Muslim men in Srebrenica as genocide and stressed that the negation of that fact hindered the process of reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina.