On Tuesday, following a tip, the police found 35 kilograms of explosive at the Potocari memorial centre, outside the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, where Serb troops killed about 8,000 local Muslims (Bosniaks) when they overran the enclave in July 1995.
Ashdown on Wednesday guaranteed the safety and security to all participants in next Monday's commemoration, which will pool Bosnia's top officials, senior officials from abroad, and families of the victims.
However, Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal on Wednesday confirmed that she would not attend the commemoration next week if the war-time Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were not arrested by that time.
I can confirm that Mrs. Del Ponte will not take part in Potocari commemoration as long as Karadzic and Mladic are on the run, the spokeswoman for the Office of Prosecutor, Florence Hartmann, told reporters at a regular weekly briefing in The Hague on Wednesday.
It is a shame that the two most responsible men for the genocide in Srebrenica have not yet been brought before justice although 10 years have passed since they were indicted, Hartmann said.