Honouring the dead: Portraits of some of the 8000 Muslims who were killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

Honouring the dead: Portraits of some of the 8000 Muslims who were killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Photo: Reuters

Serbia's nationalist President Tomislav Nikolic has personally apologised for the first time for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of 8000 Muslims.

However, he's stopped short of calling it genocide.

"I kneel and ask for forgiveness for Serbia for the crime committed in Srebrenica," Nikolic said of the slaughter, the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II.

"I kneel and ask for forgiveness for Serbia for the crime committed in Srebrenica": Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic. Photo: AFP

"I apologise for the crimes committed by any individual in the name of our state and our people," he said in Thursday's interview to be aired on Bosnian national television, parts of which have been released on YouTube.

After being elected last May, Nikolic caused a stir by refusing to acknowledge the massacre in the Bosnian enclave - in which some 8000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces - was a genocide, despite it being ruled as such by two international courts.

Nikolic at the time said "there was no genocide in Srebrenica".

Until five years ago Nikolic was a top official of the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party, which has denied Serb forces committed crimes during the Balkans wars of the 1990s.

Its leader Vojislav Seselj is on trial for war crimes before The Hague-based UN International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia.

While this marks Nikolic's first apology on Srebrenica, Serbia has in the past expressed regret over the deaths.

AFP