BELGRADE, May 23. /TASS/. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic thanked Russia, China and other countries that did not support the UN General Assembly resolution on the 1995 Srebrenica genocide.
"If you look at the distribution in terms of population, we had more than two-thirds of the world's population on our side - abstentions and [votes] against. I would like to thank China, Russia and the United Arab Emirates. Serbia will never forget this. Thanks also to our Hungarian brothers. Slovaks, Greeks, Cypriots who dared to abstain," Vucic said on Radio Television of Serbia.
The Serbian leader also listed the countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America that abstained or voted against the resolution. He thanked them for their stance.
After the vote, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on the Srebrenica genocide. The document entitled "International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the Genocide in Srebrenica in 1995" was supported by 84 countries, 19 countries voted against it, including Russia, Belarus, Hungary, China, Serbia and Syria, and 68 abstained.
The draft resolution was introduced by representatives of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Rwanda and Germany and co-authored by mainly Western countries. Russia repeatedly spoke out against the document, noting in particular that the adoption of the resolution could lead to an escalation of tensions in the region and had nothing to do with commemorating the victims of the events of those days. Vucic, for his part, said that the West was pushing the draft resolution to "demonstrate the inevitability of political punishment for all countries with an independent position on the international arena."