Bosnian slaughter admitted

LJUBLJANA, Slovenia -- Nearly nine years after the event, Bosnia's Serbian leadership has admitted responsibility for the massacre of at least 7,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica.

A 42-page report, commissioned by Bosnia's Serb Republic and made public Friday, admits for the first time that police and army units under the government's control "participated" in the massacre in July 1995.

The killings, viewed as the worst atrocity committed in Europe since World War II, were part of a final push by Bosnia's Serb leadership to create an "ethnically pure" Serbian state. The massacre provoked international revulsion and ultimately helped prompt United States and European leaders to intervene and bring an end to the three-year-long conflict.

Until recently, Bosnia's Serbian leadership has refused to acknowledge the extent of the killings. In 2002, another inquiry by the same government sought to minimize the number of people killed.

The latest report, commissioned in January under strong international pressure, concludes that from July 10 to July 19 in 1995, "several thousand" Bosnian Muslims "were liquidated in a manner which represents a heavy violation of international human rights." It also states that "the executioner undertook all measures to hide the crime by removing bodies."

The report includes the locations of 32 mass graves, 28 of which were "secondary," containing bodies that had been removed from other sites to hide them from international investigators.

International officials in the province say 11 of the sites have never been disclosed before.

In one of the clearest statements of contrition by Serb officials since the end of the war, the report's conclusion states that the fact should be faced "that some members of the Serb people have committed a crime in Srebrenica in July 1995." This in turn, it said, might help to bring perpetrators of other war crimes in Bosnia to justice.

The findings were welcomed by the country's most senior international official, Bosnia's high representative, Lord Ashdown, as an indication that the Bosnian Serb leadership was moderating its stance on war crimes.

"Provided that this continues through the remaining stages of the report, it may be possible to say that a dynamic of obstructionism on war crimes issues is being replaced by a dynamic of greater cooperation," Lord Ashdown said in a statement issued by his office.

Evidence given to the commission by Serbian Republic police officers and officials showed that the massacre was the final part of a three-stage plan titled Operation Krivaja. This included the initial attack on Srebrenica, then a so-called U.N. safe haven protected by lightly armed Dutch peacekeepers, followed by the separation of women and children from men and boys, and their subsequent execution.

The statement by Lord Ashdown's office noted the commission "alludes to orders" for the police in neighboring Serbia to take part in the operation as well as units from the rebel Serbian forces within Croatia. This evidence contradicts claims by the Serbian leaders in Belgrade that their forces did not support Bosnia's breakaway Serb Republic.

In April, the president of the Bosnian Serb Republic, Dragan Caric, indicated that his government would begin to redress its hard- line stance on crimes committed by Serbs during the war.

"After years of prevarication, we will have to finally face up to ourselves and to the dark side of our past," he said. "We must have courage to do that."

The Bosnian Serb government remains the only authority within the former Yugoslavia not to have handed over war crimes suspects to the United Nations international criminal tribunal at The Hague.

The court's most wanted suspect, the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadjic, is believed by international prosecutors to be hiding in the republic, protected by members of the Serbian security forces.

Cooperation with the court is seen as a prerequisite for Bosnia's integration into institutions like the European Union and NATO's partnership for peace program.

The report, Lord Ashdown said "is a work in progress."

"It is going in the right direction," he said, "but much more needs to be done to overcome nine years of near total inactivity" on war crimes by the Serbian Republic authorities and especially the Interior Ministry police.

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