Serbs admit Srebrenica massacre

SARAJEVO -- A Bosnian Serb government commission admitted yesterday that Serb forces murdered thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995 -- a massacre the government has always denied.

But the commission's report, published yesterday, did not call the atrocity a genocide; earlier this year, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which prosecutes war crimes committed in the Balkans in the 1990s, established that the killings were an act of genocide.

"This report will have a historic character. We have reached historic perceptions and we will have to face ourselves," said Milan Bogdanic, head of the Bosnian Serb government commission that compiled the report.

About 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by rampaging Serb forces led by indicted war criminal Ratko Mladic, as UN Dutch peacekeepers who were deployed to protect the UN "safe area" stood by helplessly.

The commission said it "established that in the period from July 10-19, 1995, several thousand Bosniaks [Muslims] were liquidated in a way that represents heavy breaches of international humanitarian law and that the executor, among other things, undertook activities to cover up the crime by relocating bodies."

"Accepting and facing the fact that some members of the Serb people committed crimes in Srebrenica in July 1995" could help investigate other crimes in Bosnia and punish those responsible, it said.

The United Nations and the Dutch government took blame for their failures, but the Serb Republic until now had failed to admit to what happened in Srebrenica, even after several convictions by the international tribunal, which is based in the Hague.

The top suspects for the Srebrenica massacre, Bosnian Serb wartime president Radovan Karadzic and Mladic, are still at large. Both were twice indicted for genocide, for Srebrenica and for the 43-month Serb siege of Sarajevo.

After two reports that failed to properly address the issue by minimizing the scope and the character of events in Srebrenica, the Serb Republic was ordered last year by Bosnia's top human rights court to fully investigate the atrocity.

The seven-member commission that compiled the report consists of experts and public figures, including one international and one Muslim member.

Despite pledges for full cooperation, the commission complained in April that its work was obstructed by civilian and military institutions. Peace overseer Paddy Ashdown fired the top military officer and a government official.

The report showed that "Operation Krivaja" had three planned phases: the attack on Srebrenica, the separation of women and children, and the execution of men.

It elaborated on the participation of military and police units, and identifies locations of 32 new mass graves.

Four of them are so-called primary graves, where the victims were originally buried, and the others are locations where the bodies were relocated to hide traces of the crime.

The commission said it has compiled data on 7,779 people who went missing in Srebrenica, 1,332 of whom have been identified, but added that the number was not final.

Ashdown, in a letter to European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said the report indicated "some progress in the Serb Republic authorities' willingness to help establish the truth." But while stressing that the final findings are to be delivered by mid-July, he said the report does not substitute for the Bosnian Serb Republic's failure to arrest war crimes suspects.