Serbia's parliament has begun debating whether to apologise to Bosnian Muslims over the massacre of 8,000 men and boys in the town of Srebrenica in 1995.
Serbia's ruling parties have already agreed the draft resolution being discussed on Tuesday, which expresses sympathy for the victims and acknowledges that Belgrade did not do enough to prevent the killings by Bosnian Serbs and Serbian paramilitaries.
The draft resolution does not, however, refer to the murders as genocide.
Serb nationalists have rejected the resolution saying that it must also include denunciations of the crimes of Bosnians and Croats, while minority Serb Muslims have dismissed it for not going far enough.
Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia, fought a series of brutal wars from 1992 to 1995 as the nation of Yugoslavia broke apart.
European hopes
The apology is aimed at showing the European Union that Serbia is addressing the painful legacy of the rule of Slobodan Milosevic, then Serb president, as it seeks to join the bloc.
"The Srebrenica resolution is necessary to discuss in parliament because with this Serbia wants to demonstrate our desire to move to regional reconciliation and demonstrate good neighbourly relations among the countries in the region," Mirko Cvetkovic, Serbia's prime minister, said last week.
Parliament is expected to vote on the resolution, which also urges other former Yugoslav countries to pass motions condemning crimes against the Serbs, later on Tuesday.
In the months preceding the end of the war, Bosnian Serb forces led by Ratko Maldic committed the massacre, the worst killing since the second world war.
Mladic is still at large, but the EU has made his capture one of the conditions for Serbia to progress in their accession to the grouping.
In 2009, a European parliament resolution condemned the Srebrenica massacre as genocide and called on the region to commemorate its July anniversary.
Al Jazeera
