Bosnia's Serb Republic offered the first formal apology today for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, in which its forces killed up to 8,000 Muslims in Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two.
"The government of the Serb Republic sympathises with the pain of the relatives of Srebrenica victims, with sincere regret and apology for the tragedy that befell them," it said.
The apology accompanied the final version of the Bosnian Serb government's report on Srebrenica, in which it admitted that Bosnian Serb forces were responsible for atrocities.
It was completed last week, a year after Bosnia's top human rights court and an international peace envoy had ordered the Serb Republic to fully investigate the crime.
Other conclusions released today confirm previously published parts of the final report, such as the figure of 7,800 victims, the location of mass graves and the authorities' stated determination to prosecute the perpetrators.
This report followed two earlier ones which were widely condemned for playing down the scope and nature of events in July 1995, when Bosnian Serb forces killed the thousands of Muslim men and boys in the three-day rampage in the eastern town, ironically designated a United Nations safe haven.
Two top suspects, Bosnian Serb wartime President Radovan Karadzic and his military chief Ratko Mladic, are still at large. Both were indicted for genocide over Srebrenica and the 43-month Serb siege of Sarajevo by the Hague war crimes tribunal.