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Why did Serbian leaders sometimes avoid using the term genocide for the Srebrenica killings?

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Two women in headscarves embrace and mourn over a green coffin among rows of identical coffins at the Potocari cemetery during the Srebrenica massacre mass funeral. — Srebrenica genocide Women mourning over a coffin before the mass funeral for 136 newly identified victims of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, 2015.

Within the Republika Srpska and among certain Serbian political leaders, the events at Srebrenica have been routinely downplayed, dismissed, or subjected to revisionist narratives that contradict findings by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice.1

By recasting the genocide as a military encounter and claiming that the majority of those killed were combatants, these leaders have sought to avoid the legal and moral implications of the term. This denialism is often part of the political mainstream in the Republika Srpska, where officials have opposed international efforts to commemorate the massacre, sometimes threatening secession or claiming that such recognition undermines the Dayton Accords. Even when Serbian officials have issued formal apologies for the "crime" committed at Srebrenica, they have frequently stopped short of labeling the event a genocide. Such efforts to minimize or reframe the mass murder of more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys serve to obstruct historical accountability and reconciliation.123