Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, led condemnation of the Russian vote to block the first formal recognition by the UN Security Council that the worst atrocity in Europe since 1945 was an act of genocide.
The victims were gunned down and buried in mass graves after Bosnian Serb forces overran a supposedly “safe haven” run by Dutch UN peacekeepers in the final months of the three-year Bosnian war.
It was one of the darkest chapters in UN history and Western powers were widely condemned for abandoning the Muslim victims to their fate.
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"The failure to adopt this resolution is a snub to the families of the victims and the survivors of Srebrenica,” Mr Hammond said. “True reconciliation requires facing up to the realities of the past by all sides and determination to learn the lessons for the future.”
President Vladimir Putin instructed his ambassador to exercise Russia’s veto power at the Security Council after he was lobbied by Serbian and Bosnian Serb leaders, Moscow’s traditional Balkan allies.
Russia was the sole country among the 15 Security Council members to vote against the resolution at a meeting that began with a minute’s silence to remember the victims. Ten members supported the resolution and four abstained, including China.
Vitaly Churkin, Moscow’s ambassador, criticised the British wording as "confrontational and politically-motivated", arguing that it unfairly singled out Bosnian Serbs for committing war crimes in a conflict in which all three ethnic groups were the victims of atrocities.
But Peter Wilson, the deputy British ambassador, delivered a stinging rebuke of the Russian vote. “The United Kingdom is outraged that Russia has vetoed this resolution today,” he told the chamber. “Russia’s actions tarnishes the memory of all those who died in the Srebrenica genocide.
“This draft resolution did not point fingers of blame, score political points nor seek to reopen painful divisions. It did not link the crimes of Srebrenica to the Serb people. It recognised that there were victims on all sides.
“But reconciliation must be based on a shared acceptance of the facts; that genocide occurred at Srebrenica. This is a legal fact, not a political judgement. On this there is no compromise.”
But Mr Churkin insisted: "The draft that we have in front of us will not help peace in the Balkans but rather doom this region to tension.”
British and American diplomats had been locked in tense negotiations with their Russian counterparts for 24 hours after a vote was delayed on Tuesday, but Moscow refused to drop its insistence that references to the killings as an act of genocide be scrapped.
Two international courts have already called the slaughter genocide, but the world body has never reached that conclusion.
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