From: draskovi@usc.edu (Zoran Draskovic)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: NYT
Date: 26 Aug 1992 22:18:28 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu



The New York Times, August 23, 1992.

NO EVIDENCE OF MASS KILLING AT SERBIAN CAMPS FOUND

By David Binder

WASHINGTON, Aug 22 - Two weeks after President Bush ordered American 
intelligence agencies to determine whether Serbian forces were 
systematically killing prisoners at detention camps in Bosnia, 
Administration officials say they have found no evidence to authenticate 
such allegations.

Intelligence officials, noting that Mr. Bush renewed the order last week, 
said they had "redoubled and tripled" their efforts to establish what had 
been happening in detention camps for Croats and Muslims in areas seized by 
Serbian forces since April.

The officials said they had reached roughly the same conclusions as had 
European Community observers, United Nations representatives and 
journalists in Bosnia that killing and torture had taken place at some of 
the Serbian camps but that there was no evidence of systematic or 
institutionalized killing.

In a television interview on Thursday, Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence 
S. Eagleburger said "On the basis of what we have so far, I think it's best 
to say the evidence is unpleasant conditions. A terrible thing to have 
happen, but I am not sure I would at this stage go to the point of saying 
'death camp' if what we mean by that is an Auschwitz or a Belsen." 

C.I.A. Predicted Collapse

The analytical acumen of the Central Intelligence Agency in  the region was 
demonstrated in the autumn of 1990 when it accurately predicted that 
Yugoslavia was destined to collapse as early as six months later in ethnic 
conflicts leading to warfare. The agency, however, lacks human and 
technological resources on the ground in the former Yugoslavia to respond 
to Mr Bush's order, intelligence officials said. The remoteness of Bosnia 
and its mountainous terrain also make it difficult for electronic and 
photographic surveillance, they said.

A 40-page report by two staff members of the Senate Foreign Relations on 
atrocities in Bosnia, released on Tuesday, concluded that there was 
"evidence of organized killing" in some detention camps run by Serbs. But 
the I authors Peter Galbraith and Michelle Maynard, said that a week of 
interviews with survivors of the Serbian campaigns in northeastern and 
southeastern Bosnia yielded "no evidence of a concerted plan to kill 
systematically the Muslim population."

In May, as fighting intensified between Serbs, Croats and Muslims in Bosnia 
and Herzegovina, President Bush ordered the C.I.A. to provide a report on 
human rights abuses in former Yugoslavia. The agency responded that 
conditions throughout the newly independent republic of Bosnia were 
"terrible all over," but the review did not specify any detention camps 
where systematic abuses might have taken place, an intelligence official 
said.

In June, the State Department began publicly condemning the Serbian 
practice of "ethnic cleansing" Q driving Muslims and Croats out of 
communities where their people had lived for decades, even centuries.

Reports From U.S. Envoys

American diplomats in Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, and Zagreb, the 
Croatian capital, cabled reports of rumors and their own suppositions that 
detention camps might have been established where inmates were tortured and 
killed. But the diplomats were unable to prove their suspicions or the 
rumors, a State Department official said.

According to senior Administration officials, the first independent 
official report that torture and killings had taken place in specific 
detention centers run by Serbian forces was handed to Assistant Secretary 
of State John R. Bolton by a Bosnian Government official on July 29 at a 
United Nations conference on Balkan refugees in Geneva.

----------
No comparison to 'an Auschwitz or a Belsen.' 
----------

At that point the Bush Administration began examining what an official 
characterized as "rumors and reports" of Serbian concentration camps more 
closely.

A State Department spokesman said on Aug. 3 that the Administration had 
indeed received "our own reports, information similar to press reports," 
that "Serbian forces are maintaining what they call detention centers for 
Croatians and Muslims," and that there have been abuses and torture and 
killings taking place in those areas."

Backtracking, the State Department on Aug. 4 and Aug. 5, and then President 
Bush on Aug. 6, said the United States was unable to confirm these reports. 
It was on Aug. 6 that Mr. Bush ordered the intelligence agencies to 
investigate the allegations.

An official who has access to intelligence reports and diplomatic cables 
about the Yugoslav conflict said: "I
found nothing confirmed. There were comments in cables over the last five 
or six weeks saying we have to be concerned that there might well be camps, 
but no confirmed reports. There were rumors of camps for refugees. The 
embassy in Belgrade did not have any hard information."
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