The government of Republika Srpska, the Serb entity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, refutes the claims that Bosnian Serb forces killed at least 8,000 Bosniaks in Srebrenica in July 1995 and will take steps to establish the real number of those killed, Bosnian Serb prime minister Milorad Dodik said at a press conference in Banja Luka on Monday.
Dodik said that it had not been possible to establish the truth about what had happened in Srebrenica because of the pressure of the international community.
A commission set up by the Republika Srpska authorities in 2004 has found that thousands of Bosniaks were killed in Srebrenica and has published a full report on it. The then president of Republika Srpska, Dragan Cavic, condemned the crimes committed there, saying in a special statement that the Srebrenica tragedy was a black page in the history of the Serb people.
Dodik said that the report and Cavic's statement had been the result of the pressure exerted on that commission by the then international High Representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Paddy Ashdown.
Dodik said that the aim of his government was not to deny that the crimes were committed, but that it wanted to verify the facts. He claimed that there was evidence to prove that the names of people considered to be victims were later found on voter registers and that some of the people buried in the Potocari Memorial Complex outside Srebrenica had been killed elsewhere.
The International Court of Justice has found that genocide was indeed committed in the Srebrenica area and that at least 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed there.
