How Britain and the US decided to abandon Srebrenica to its fate

Not a single politician, diplomat or senior soldier saw fit to resign over the betrayal of Srebrenica. It will be interesting to see if anything approaching an apology - let alone a reckoning - by Britain, America or France is spoken next weekend. Most of those involved were promoted or moved on to lucrative positions. After he had left the government, the former British foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, who had chastised attempts at intervention to help Bosnia, along with Neville-Jones, famously beat a path to Belgrade to engage Milševic - just before he was indicted for genocide - on behalf of the NatWest markets bank.

The reaction of Akashi to the killing, as it began on 13 July, was to assure that the UN “should not fear an international outcry as at no time have Unprofor drivers or vehicles assisted in the evacuation”.

Toby Gati, the US assistant secretary of state for intelligence, told the current US ambassador, Samantha Power, for a book: “Ethnic cleansing was not a priority of our policy. When you make an original decision you are not going to respond, then I’m sorry, these things are going to happen.”

The then UN secretary general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, told the BBC on 11 July 1995, when Mladic entered Srebrenica: “We have been humiliated and duped. We will have to live with it. But in several days, it will belong to the past.”

Bildt, in his memoirs, insists that: “They [the Bosnian leadership] knew that the peace settlement would mean the loss of the enclave. So from this point of view what happened made things easier.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/04/how-britain-and-us-abandoned-srebrenica-massacre-1995