SARAJEVO, April 16 (Hina) - The international community's high representative to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Paddy Ashdown, on Friday dismissed the Bosnian Serb Army chief of staff, General Cvjetko Savic, and the head of the Bosnian Serb
government office for cooperation with the Hague war crimes tribunal, Dejan Miletic, finding them directly responsible for the obstruction of an investigation into the Srebrenica massacre.
SARAJEVO, April 16 (Hina) - The international community's high
representative to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Paddy Ashdown, on Friday
dismissed the Bosnian Serb Army chief of staff, General Cvjetko Savic,
and the head of the Bosnian Serb government office for cooperation
with the Hague war crimes tribunal, Dejan Miletic, finding them
directly responsible for the obstruction of an investigation into the
Srebrenica massacre.#L#
Speaking at a press conference in Sarajevo, Ashdown said that Savic
was directly responsible for the evident obstruction of a commission
in charge of locating mass graves containing the bodies of people
killed in Srebrenica in July 1995.
It is simply not credible that the Bosnian Serb Army does not know the
whereabouts of unaccounted mass graves or that it cannot provide the
name of any witness or participant in the massacre, Ashdown said.
The dismissals followed the failure by the commission set up by the
Bosnian Human Rights Chamber to collect evidence of what had happened
to thousands of missing Bosniaks who were most probably killed by
Bosnian Serb forces under Ratko Mladic.
This week the commission has submitted an interim report to the
Bosnian Serb government and the Office of the High Representative,
listing problems it encountered in its work.
Ashdown said that the obstructionism was the result of the fact that
there were still people who denied the massacre ever happening. He
said he was willing to give the commission two more weeks to gather
the necessary information.
Ashdown said he held Bosnian Serb president Dragan Cavic, premier
Dragan Mikerevic, interior minister Zoran Djeric and defence minister
Milovan Stankovic responsible for the commission's work. He also
called for the dismissal of the chairman of the Srebrenica commission,
Marko Arsovic.
Ashdown said that a new report on Srebrenica must be submitted until
the end of the first week of June so that NATO member states could
assess the work done and decide whether Bosnia-Herzegovina met the
conditions for admission to the Partnership for Peace programme at the
Alliance's summit in Istanbul.
The truth about Srebrenica is an unavoidable part of the
reconstruction of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the high representative said.
(Hina) vm