Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic, in a newspaper interview on Tuesday, denied that genocide was committed against Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995, saying that it was a crime committed by individual members of the Serbian people.
Nikolic was speaking in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera ahead of his first official visit to Rome.
"What happened in Srebrenica is not genocide. It is the individual guilt of members of the Serbian people. The Serbian parliament condemned the crime, but it did not say that it was genocide. No Serb admits that genocide was committed in Srebrenica and neither do I," Serbian media quoted him as saying in the interview.
On the subject of Serbia's integration into the European Union, Nikolic said that the EU should not ask Serbia to recognise Kosovo's independence as a membership condition. "If we need to renounce Kosovo, then it is more acceptable to us to forget Europe," he said.
"It has been our goal since 2000 to join the EU. We have completed the reform of our economy, justice system, secret service, public sector...Now the condition is recognition of Kosovo. Whether we want Europe or not is not a question. The right question is whether it wants us. You should ask them," the Serbian president said.
Serbian media reports said that the presidents of Serbia and Italy agreed at their meeting that no new conditions for the start of EU accession talks should be put before Belgrade.
"Recognition of Kosovo by Serbia as a condition for the start of EU membership negotiations is not the common foreign policy of the Union," Italian President Giorgio Napolitano was quoted as telling the press after the meeting. "We will support all efforts by Serbia at all stages of negotiations on accession to the EU. We are not among those countries or governments of the Union that set up barriers by demanding recognition of Kosovo," he added.
Nikolic said that Serbia would not agree to new conditions. "We consider a new condition anything that was not written in the last progress report by the European Commission."
"No one can impose on us a decision to give up a part of our territory in order to stay on the European road. We do not ask other nations to do that and we do not want others to ask that from us," Nikolic said.
