Title: Message
| Bosnian Serb Govt To Be Penalized Over Srebrenica
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© 2004, Dow Jones Newswires |
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SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP)--Bosnia's top
international official said Thursday he will punish Bosnian Serb
authorities for failing to cooperate with a commission that was to reveal
the fate of thousands of victims of Europe's worst massacre since World
War II.
Bosnian Serb authorities were ordered last year by the top
human rights court here and by Bosnia's international administrator, Paddy
Ashdown, to review the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys at
Srebrenica and submit a report.
The report was supposed to address
what happened to those missing after the fall of the eastern Muslim
enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995 at the end of Bosnia's 3 1/2 year war.
Ashdown gave the Bosnian Serb authorities in October last year six
months to form a commission to produce a full report, and said he would
hold the president of the Bosnian Serb republic personally responsible for
the success or failure of the commission's work.
Wednesday, the
commission submitted a preliminary report which failed to address the fate
of the victims, but only listed the obstructions in its work by Bosnian
Serb institutions.
In a statement on Thursday, Ashdown said the
interim report was nothing else but "a catalogue of unbelievable
difficulties and obstructionism."
"It is simply not acceptable
that nearly a decade after the shocking crimes of Srebrenica, there are
still individuals or institutions ... who are trying to cover up these
crimes," Ashdown said.
The Bosnian Serbs have been under foreign
pressure to acknowledge that their forces committed the Srebrenica
atrocities, to name the perpetrators and to locate where the victims'
remains were buried. Forensics experts have found about 5,000 victims in
mass graves, but the fate of thousands of others is still unknown.
Ashdown said the implications of the failure to produce a detailed
report are so serious "that I will be forced to take direct actions,"
Ashdown said, adding he would reveal his next steps Friday.
Under
the peace accord that ended the 1992-95 war, Ashdown has the power to
impose laws and fire local officials as high as presidents who fail to
comply with the peace process.
The same agreement also divided
postwar Bosnia into two mini-states, a Serb republic and a Muslim-Croat
federation.
The Srebrenica investigation commission includes
Bosnian Serb judges and lawyers, a representative of the victims' families
and an international expert.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 15, 2004 12:23 ET (16:23 GMT)
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