Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago
Date: Tuesday, 6 Oct 1992 23:45:16 CDT
From: <U15231@uicvm.uic.edu>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna
Subject: U.N. Sets Up War-Crimes Commission for Former Yugoslavia


        UNITED NATIONS (UPI) -- The U.N. Security Council decided unanimously
Tuesday to establish a war-crimes commission to study charges of severe
human rights violations in the former Yugoslavia and to prosecute those
who may be charged in an international court.
        The council said the commission, to be composed of ``impartial
experts,'' will ``examine and analyze'' all information obtained by them
or through investigation or efforts by organizations other than the
United Nations to uncover executions or human rights abuses in the
Balkans.
        The council adopted the resolution forming the war-crimes commission
with a 15-0 vote after calling on governments and international
organizations to provide within 30 days ``substantiated information'' on
alleged human rights violations in the territory of the former
Yugoslavia.
        The commission was charged to provide concluding proofs that
``violations of Geneva Conventions and of other international
conventions on human rights had been committed in the territory of the
former Yugoslavia.''
        The council asked Secretary-General Boutros Ghali to name the experts
on the commission and to make a report on the panel's findings. It did
not specify the next step to be taken, but diplomats said they have been
considering calling for a trial of those responsible for human rights
violations.
        ``It doesn't make any sense if the commission would not lead to a
trial,'' Venezuelan U.N. Ambassador Diego Arria said.
        U.N. officials said legal steps would be taken to establish a
tribunal similar to the Nuremberg trials, the records of which were
deposited to the care of the United Nations.
        In Geneva, a special investigator for the U.N. Commission for Human
Rights, former Polish Premier Tadeusz Mazowiecki, said he will make a
second visit to Bosnia-Hercegovina, Croatia, Kosovo and other parts of
the former Yugoslavia to continue his investigation.
        Mazowiecki will begin his 10-day visit in Sarajevo on Oct. 12.
Mazowiecki's first trip to Bosnia-Hercegovina in August resulted in a
harsh report condemning all warring factions for violating human rights.
        Serbian forces in Bosnia-Hercegovina have been accused of carrying
out ``ethnic cleansing'' to gain territories occupied by Muslim Slavs or
Croats, thus driving hundreds of thousands of people out of their
destroyed homes.
        The Serbs also were alleged to have tortured and killed Muslims in
detention centers and prisons, but Serbian leaders denied the charges.
        The United States last month said it has evidence that at least 3,000
Muslim men, women and children were executed in May and June in Serb-run
detention centers near the Bosnian town of Brcko.
        By another vote of 15-0 the council decided also to demilitarize the
Prevlaka peninsula in the Adriatic Sea which had been used by Belgrade's
Yugoslav army to attack Croatia's port city of Dubrovnik and control
navigation on a 100-mile-long coastline.
        In the resolution on the Prevlaka peninsula, the council asked that
Croatia and Montenegro withdraw their heavy weapons and to cooperate
with monitors from the European Community.
        In Belgrade Tuesday the official Tanjug news agency announced that
the army of rump Yugoslavia reiterated its intention to withdraw from
the disputed peninsula within the next two weeks.
        The army of the Serbia-Montenegro federation said that its units and
equipment would be ``transferred'' by Oct. 20 from the peninsula and the
surrounding region as required by a Sept. 29 pact reached in Geneva
between Yugoslav President Dobrica Cosic and his Croatian counterpart,
Franjo Tudjman.
        But, the army warned that should Croatia violate the agreement to
create a demilitarize zone on the peninsula, it would ``use all of its
potential to defend'' the main Yugoslav navy base at adjacent Boka
Kotorska Bay.
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