Klaus Kinkel passes away

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - German politician and former Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel passed away yesterday, at the age of 82, German media report.

The former president of the German liberal party FDP was the German Foreign Minister during the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina. He will be remembered for feeling responsible for the genocide that occurred in Srebrenica, as he could do nothing to prevent it.

He also assessed that the international community failed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. "I feel co-responsible for what happened there," he said in an interview with Deutsche Welle radio.

He said that at the time the information was incomplete and insufficient, and that neither he nor other foreign ministers "knew what horrors were happening there during those days, from July 11 to 16, 1995".

During his tenure as head of German diplomacy, he was among the first to advocate for the establishment of an international tribunal for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.