But the commission said that the number of provable cases of rape may be substantiakky lewer than the 20.000 estimated earlier this yeaar by a commette of the European Community.

The EC group said that Muslim women were raped by Serbian soldiers as part of their campaign of "ethnic cleasing" in the Bosnia-Herzegovina civil war.

The commission has collected reports of about 3.000 rape cases in its data base at the International Human Rigths Law Institute at DePaul University, Chicago. But the commission of four has been able to identify only about 800 victims by name.

But on the basis of an examination of the first 330 victims for whom it has names the commission said it inclined to believe that rape has been used by the Serbs as a weapon of war in their campaign to drive Muslims from their homes and seize their land.

The commission sid that the largest number of victims were Muslims and the largest number of perpetrators were Serbs.

The commission pointed out, in its report issued this week, that most case occurred betweenm May and December last year and in regions where Serbian forces were systematiccally driving out the Muslims.

It also says that accusations against members of the same military and police units suggest "command responsability by commission or omission", meaning the soldiers were either encouraged to commit rape by their officers or not punished for doing go.

The commission is now planning to send specialist teams of women into the former Yugoslavia to interview rape victims and accumulate mere evidenc. After the loan of a Dutch Army engineering unit and gift of money mainly from the United States and Canada, the commission is also planning to start digging up the mass graves found at Vukovar and Ovcara.

The commission was set up to start gathering evidence of war crimes in the former Yugoslav federation for use in prosecutions before the Security Council's war crimes tribunal.

The commission is due to wind up its work early next year when it will hand over the evidence it has gathered to a special war crimes prosecutor to be appointed by the council. The prosecutor and his own staff of investigators will then seek to develop from this material specific war crimes charges against individuals for trial before the tribunal.