AKASHI: WAR IN B-H RESULT OF INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY'S HYPOCRISY

SARAJEVO, Feb 12 (Hina) - Jasushi Akashi, former head of the U.N. Mission for the former Yugoslavia on Friday said he still believed that the peace mission had given positive results, primarily in Croatia and Macedonia but also in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Akashi, who after his inglorious departure from his post in the Balkans became the director of Tokyo's Peace Research Institute, told the Sarajevo daily "Oslobodjenje" that UN peace forces had neither had the opportunity nor the power to stop the war. Our mandate was often a source of frustration for us as well, Akashi said adding this referred primarily to the decisions made by the Security Council on the establishment of six protected zones in BH, however, neither enough personnel nor means had been secured for that. Asked about his role in the fall of the eastern Bosnian protected zone of Srebrenica, seized by the Serbs, Akashi said that responsibility for that tragedy lay primarily with U.N. generals who wrongly assessed the situation. They believed that Serbs would not seize Srebrenica, thinking they would not know what to do with all those civilians, Akashi said. He agreed with the reporter's comment that the U.N. peace operation fell victim to the hypocrisy in U.N. structures, but added that the tragedy was the result of the hypocrisy of the whole international community. According to Akashi, the basic problem in Bosnia-Herzegovina was that the United States had had good ideas but until the war it had been neither willing nor ready to itself participate in their realisation. Akashi added that he was writing memoirs on the events during his mandate as head of the U.N. mission. (hina) jn rml