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UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 21 (AP) Bosnian leaders condemned the U.N.’s failure to stop the war in Ukraine, saying on Wednesday it was a chilling repeat of the country’s brutal conflict three decades ago.
Speaking at the UN General Assembly, the chairman of the three-person presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sefik Zaferovic, criticized the Security Council’s inability to adopt a binding resolution or statement on the war.
“The United Nations system cannot prevent or stop the war in our country…Unfortunately, this is happening again,” Zaferovic said. He said the Security Council was “clearly unable to meet its obligations”.
The post-World War II structure of the Security Council gave five countries veto powers — the United States, China, Britain, France and Russia, the aggressors of the Ukraine war. Russia’s presence on the Security Council hinders more substantive action. The larger 193-nation assembly, without a veto, passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine and the withdrawal of Russian troops.
Referring to the ceasefire resolution, Zaferovich said: “While this resolution does not have the power to stop wars, it does have the power to stop lies.”
The Bosnian War began 30 years ago in 1992, when Bosnian Serbs, aided by the Yugoslav army, tried to establish ethnically pure territories to join neighboring Serbia. More than 100,000 people were killed and millions left homeless in the worst bloodshed in Europe since World War II.
The 1992-1995 war pitted mostly Muslim, Serb and Croat Bosnians against each other and ended with a US-backed peace deal that created two regions.
Serious tensions persist, but Bosnian Muslim Dzaferovic said the country was strong enough “to hold on” despite an internal movement he called “part of a broad wave of right-wing populism in Europe”.
The economic and energy crises go hand in hand with populism, Dzaferovic said, warning that today’s dangerous modern echoes of Nazism’s racial supremacy rhetoric lead to wars and, ultimately, the creation of the United Nations on the basis that all people are equal.
“About eight years later, we can hear voices denying these fundamental principles, either publicly or implicitly,” he said. “It’s just one step from these ideas to violence.” (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from the Syndicated News feed, the body of the content may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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