The New York Times

Wednesday, April 01, 1998

The Horror Of Bosnia' Draws Only a Few

By TIM WEINER

WASHINGTON, March 31 - Lilting violin and accordion music from a nearby reception echoed in a hearing room on Capitol Hill this morning resounding off walls draped with photographs of mass graves.

Slides -showing skulls shattered by bullets and skeletal wrists bound with wire filled a darkened chamber.

The bones belonged to men and boys hunted and killed like rabbits in the woods.

The music was a jarring accompaniment to the horrific images at a Congressional hearing that explored the West's inaction while thousands were massacred by Bosnian Serb soldiers at the United Nations "safe haven" of Srebrenica in July 1995.

At this sparsely attended hearing three members of Congress came --the subject was genocide, past, present, and future.

"No Bosnian Serb leaders have been arrested in the massacre, despite stern statements by the United States, the United Nations and NATO - the same powers whose forces took no action, despite pledges to protect the town and its, Muslim inhabitants:

Representative Christopher H. Smith, a New Jersey Republican who convened the hearing, said the United, States and the United Nations should make public what they knew at the time about the possibility of a mass killing and why they did not or could not stop it.

Many such files exist. For example an American spy satellite photographed hundreds of Muslim men held at gunpoint in an open field on July 13, 1995, evidence of a crime in progress. These pictures showed "men kneeling on the ground near what soon turned out to be mass graves," Mr. Smith said.

Other classified Government records could "shed light on what the international community knew about Srebrenica before, during and after the massacres," he said.

Releasing such documents, he said, would make the United States begin to come to grips with its failure to take action against the authors of a massacre and would hold the United Nations accountable for its role in what was,"at the least,- betrayal of trust, at worst, complicity in genocide."

Witnesses testified that the slow exhumation of bones "and facts had not stopped those most culpable from killing again and that the failure to account for the crimes of Srebrenica was the root cause of new deaths in the province of Kosovo in southern Serbia this month.

"We are at the end of the 'Never Again' century and genocide is happening again," said Eric Stover, a human-rights advocate who helped dig up those bones.

John Heffernan, the executive director of the Coalition for International Justice, who was an aid worker during the fighting in the Balkans, noted in his testimony that President Clinton last week acknowledged the world's failure to act while 500,000 Rwandans were killed in 1994.

Mr. Clinton vowed "Never again must we shy away in the face of evidence" of genocide, but the world has shied away from Srebrenica, Mr. Heffernan observed, and Serbian paramilitary forces have, been firing on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, killing at least 80 people.

He and other witnesses called for the United Nations and the United States to help arrest the Bosnian Serb leaders charged with masterminding the biggest war crime in Europe since World War II: the former commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, and the former President, Radovan Karadzic.

The facts of Srebrenica are known. On July 10, 1995, soldiers of the Bosnian Serb army began storming the town, a refuge under United Nations protection where more than 40,000 Muslims sought shelter from war.

Some Western commanders thought the "safe haven" was indefensible militarily, and complained that Bosnian Muslim troops were operating out of Srebrenica. And some Western diplomats viewed a Muslim enclave encircled by Bosnian Serbs as an impediment to negotiated boundaries for a cease-fire.

In addition, many senior officers in the peacekeeping force thought the Bosnian Serbs would simply occupy the town, and said later that they did not receive adequate warning about Bosnian Serb intentions. The case was made that only the mobilization of a vast NATO-led ground force could saved Srebrenica.

The argument over why Western commanders let Srebrenica fall continues. But when it fell, General Mladic's troops began rounding up and hunting down the male inhabitants.

When the killing was over, more than 6,000 people were dead.

Days before, Gen. Bernard Janvier, the United Nations commander for Bosnia, vetoed air strikes that.

Dutch peacekeepers in Srebrenica had requested to defend the town. After the town fell, the Dutch peacekeepers failed to relay crucial warnings to the United Nations, including their own accounts of General Mladic's vow to massacre the Muslims.

The witnesses testifying today said the failure of 35,000 heavily armed NATO troops in Bosnia to arrest General Mladic and Dr. Karadzic was evidence of the emptiness of the world's promises about Srebrenica.

The Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, is directing the crackdown in Kosovo while providing a 'safe area'- confirmed by a number of very highly placed U.S. Government officials - for the twice-indicted alleged architect of Srebrenica, General Mladic," Mr. Heffernan said.

Diane Paul, a Human Rights Watch expert, said, "We have been told, repeatedly, and I might add, condescendingly, that those indicted for war crimes will be brought to justice 'sooner or later.' "

But "the two persons believed responsible for organizing the systematic deaths of thousands of people from Srebrenica are still at large," she said. "What message is being sent to Milosevic on Kosovo when Mladic and Karadzic are permitted to escape justice?"