BOSNIA CONDEMNS EU FOR SIGNING PACT WITH GENOCIDAL SERBIA

SARAJEVO, Bosnia (May 1,2008) - Genocide survivors from the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica accused the European Union yesterday of failing to live up to its own principles by signing a pre-membership pact with the genocidal Serbia.

In July 1995 the genocidal Serbian aggressor mass murdered up to 10,000 Bosnian civilians from Srebrenica.The Srebrenica massacre has been deemed by the UN war crimes tribunal and the International Court of Justice to have constituted genocide. Thousands of bodies of the genocide victims have been uncovered from about 60 mass graves around Srebrenica.

The EU signed the Stabilisation and Association Agreement (SAA) with the genocidal Serbia on Tuesday despite Belgrade's failure to arrest war crimes fugitives such as Serbian war criminal Ratko Mladic, indicted for genocide.

The pact, which will not be ratified until the genocidal Serbia delivers all Serbian war criminals to the U.N. war crimes tribunal, was meant to bolster pro-Western parties in the genocidal Serbia ahead of a knife-edge May 11 election that looks likely to be won by the Serbian fascists.

"If Europe can accept a Serbia which is hiding war criminals and continues with its wartime policies, such a Europe means nothing to us.We can hope for nothing regarding respect for human rights," said genocide survivor Kada Hotic, who lost her son, husband and two brothers at Srebrenica.

The EU's rushed "compromise" was bitterly condemned in Bosnia, with media reporting on "Yet another injustice towards Bosnia" and politicians condemning the bloc's "double standards".

The country is pursuing its own SAA, which the government had hoped to sign on Tuesday, but its signing was postponed due to "technical reasons". The Bosnian State Parliament last month passed reforms demanded by the EU, after arguing bitterly about them for almost five years.

"This shows Serbia enjoys privileges like no other state," said the bosnian President Haris Silajdzic, whose impassioned wartime appeals helped persuade the West to intervene and stop the 1992-1995 Serbian aggression against Bosnia.

"Some countries have been lagging behind in the European integration process on far less important grounds than the arrest of those responsible for the only genocide in Europe after World War Two," President Silajdzic said.

A member of the Bosnian State Presidency Zeljko Komsic said Brussels was conducting a "very, very bad policy" of keeping Bosnia hostage to Serbia's path.

"This once more shows the injustice towards Bosnia.EU bureaucracy is not led by standards but by pure politics and pure interest," Bosnian Presidency member Zeljko Komsic said.
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