DEPUTY HIGH REP VISITS EXHUMATION SITE OF BOSNIAN CROATS

( Editorial: --> 1776 ) BUGOJNO, Aug 4 (Hina) - Nineteen bodies of Croat victims from the Croat-Muslim conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina were exhumed on Tuesday, during the second day of exhumations from a mass grave in Humac in the Bugojno municipality of central Bosnia. Eyewitnesses claim Muslim soldiers at the time of the Croat-Muslim conflict (1993 and 1994) imprisoned, killed and then threw the victims into a limestone cave, from where they forced mobilised Bugojno Croats to bury the victims in Humac. Every exhumed body was contained in a nylon bag without identification papers. This afternoon the international community's Deputy High Representative to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Jacques Klein, visited Humac. He emphasised that together everyone had a duty to find all the missing and carry out identification of the dead regardless of nationality, because anything else would be unsatisfactory for justice. Asked by reporters whether anyone would made answerable for crimes committed against Croats, Klein responded that the exhumations had not led to justice and the truth, adding that the best evidence was with the people who did the killings. Federal Commission for Exchanging and Finding Missing and Killed Persons representative Jasmin Odabasic was upset that also present at the exhumations was the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia- Herzegovina's (HDZ BiH) Bugojno branch president Ante Mustapic. Odabasic said he had asked Klein for the exhumations not be politicised. He said the reasons for today's exhumations of Croats was to confirm the cause of death and give a religious burial. According to him, it could not be treated as exhumations in which the identity of those dug out had to be confirmed. (Hina) mbr 041907 MET aug 98