Top officials in Serbia and Bosnia called Tuesday for calming tensions raised by recent war crime verdicts against two former Serb officials for their role in the 1990s Balkans wars.
"We are going to try to lower the tone, and settle in peace problems in our relations," Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said after meeting the Muslim member of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, Bakir Izetbegovic, on the sidelines of an economic conference in Mostar.
Tensions between two communities rose after the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in late March sentenced Bosnian Serb wartime political chief Radovan Karadzic to 40 years in prison and in another case acquitted Serbian ultranationalist and ex-paramilitary leader Vojislav Seselj.
Karadzic was notably found guilty for the genocide in Srebrenica where some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in July 1995 by Bosnian Serb forces, a few months before the end of the 1992-1995 inter-ethnic war in Bosnia.
Izetbegovic said after Karadzic's verdict that it was "the most important one since Nuremberg", referring to the trials of prominent Nazis after World War II.
But Belgrade has denounced it as a "selective justice" aimed at condemning "one people for crimes that were committed by everyone" during the war in Bosnia, which claimed some 100,000 lives as the country's three main ethnic communities of Muslims, Serbs and Croats, fought each other.
Izetbegovic also said that the verdict on Seselj "rightly provoked anger because a war criminal was acquitted."
But on Tuesday the two leaders said they would "intensify the dialogue and contacts" between their countries and communities in order to improve relations.
"We believe that the relations between Serbs and Muslims are the back bone for the survival of the Western Balkans... for the peace and for the security of people in the entire region," Vucic said.
Izetbegovic called for "respect of the truth and verdicts of international tribunals," and that he was open to dialogue with Belgrade.
"We will always remember certain things, but it should not prevent us from talking, and it will not be a reason to create problems and deteriorate our relations," he said.