SENATOR DOLE VIEWS MASS GRAVE NEAR CAPLJINA

( Editorial: --> 9529 ) CAPLJINA, April 25 (Hina) - Chairman of the International Commission for Missing Persons, US senator Robert Dole and deputy to the high international representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jacques Klein, on Saturday viewed the site of a mass grave in Tasovcici, near Capljina (southern Bosnia-Herzegovina), where the bodies of 23 victims were found. Exhumation of the mass grave in Tasovcici began on Friday, and, according to the president of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Missing Persons' Commission, Amor Masovic, the buried persons were Moslems-Bosniacs killed during Moslem-Croat combats in 1993. Senator Dole expressed optimism about the progress that had been achieved during the past two months. A lot of effort is needed, and the sides in Bosnia-Herzegovina have to be encouraged to increase their cooperation and to achieve more progress, Dole said. He stressed he would inform President Bill Clinton about the process of exhumation. Masovic told reporters that there was proof that 80 Moslems- Bosniacs had been buried in the mass grave in 1993. The 26 bodies handed over to the Bosniac side in November of 1996 had assumably been exhumed from this particular mass grave, Masovic said. He added that nothing was known about the remaining 30 bodies. He also announced continued exhumations in the vicinity of Mostar, where, he said, there were some ten to twenty locations in which victims of war had been buried. Masovic said all three sides in Bosnia-Herzegovina were currently searching for 800 missing persons in the Herzegovina area (hina) lm 252116 MET apr 98