BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Serbia’s Balkan neighbors boycotted President Tomislav Nikolic’s inauguration on Monday, claiming statements by the new Serbian nationalist leader reignite wartime tensions and cast doubt over his proclaimed pro-European Union goals.

Although invited, the leaders of Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia and Macedonia — the Balkan states that were embroiled in a bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990’s — shunned the ceremonies at Belgrade’s downtown presidential headquarters after Nikolic denied that the Srebrenica massacre, during which Bosnian Serb forces killed some 8,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995, was genocide.