LETTER OF LADY THATCHER TO MAZOWIECKI

ZAGREB, Dec 5 (Hina) - Former British Premier Lady Margaret Thatcher forwarded a letter to Special Rapporteur to the UN Commission on Human Rights, Tadeus Mazowiecky, in which she would like to draw his attention once more to the unknown fate of the missing wounded persons from the hospital of Vukovar expressing her condemnation of the Serbian aggression against Croatia and Bosnia- Herzegovina. Her letter reads:" I have recently been visited by several ladies from the destroyed Croatian city of Vukovar. They are trying to draw the attention of the international community to the fact that so many people from Vukovar- among them their own sons- are still unaccounted for. They told me how a Serb Colonel- one Veselin Sljivcanin- ordered the Vukovar hospital patient and staff (and other sheltering there) to get into six busses, allegedly taking them to an interrogation centre. Those people- some 269 of them, I am told- have never been seen again. Perhaps they have been executed and their bodies are in the suspected mass graves at Ovcara and elsewhere which I understand the Serbs are preventing you and the International Red Cross investigating. But perhaps some of them are still alive; it is suggested that they may be in labour camps within Serbia. As you will understand, the mothers of Vukovar- and many, many others- remain in an agony of doubt about their sons, fearing yet not knowing the worst. There is, of course, so much cruelty and suffering in the former Yugoslavia that the case of Vukovar can be echoed elsewhere. But I do find it monstrous that the Serbs are able to get away with refusing to account for the whereabouts of those they took from this hospital- and that although they do so the international community is seriously considering lifting sanctions on Serbia. Moreover, Vukovar has a special symbolic significance which will certainly not be lost on you. It was here that the Serbs first demonstrated the full nature of their policy of ethnic cleansing to the extent of the total destruction of a thousand year old city. My view is well known: that if the West had stood up to Milosevic's aggression at Vukovar we could have preventing the ensuing warfare which now is engulfing Bosnia too. I do now urge you to do all in your power to draw attention to the obstruction which the Serbs are placing in the way of uncovering the truth about the fate of those who were in Vukovar hospital and to have the Serbian Government make available the suspected mass graves for international inspection. This scandal is, indeed, surely a matter for the Security Council itself since it goes to the very heart of whether Serbia is to be treated as a participating member of the international community or as an outcast." 051521 MET dec 93