It's hard to say sorry, but it's even harder to say you're sorry for a genocide. The word just sticks in the throats of those who should be saying it, as the Turks have been demonstrating for the past hundred years in the case of the Armenians of eastern Anatolia. And the Serbs have just shown themselves to be just as tongue-tied in the case of the Bosnian Muslims slaughtered at Srebrenica.
Saturday, July 11, was the 20th anniversary of the murder of between 7,000 and 8,000 people when Srebrenica was taken by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995. The town's population was swollen by refugees who had fled there to escape the "ethnic cleansing" that was being carried out against Muslims elsewhere in eastern Bosnia, because it was a United Nations-designated "safe area" defended by NATO troops. Or rather, not defended.
When the Bosnian Serbs, having surrounded Srebrenica for three years, finally moved to take it in July 1995, the U.N. and NATO commanders refused to use air strikes to stop them. And the Dutch troops who were there to protect the town decided they'd rather live and let unarmed civilians die.