Reports of War Atrocities Outrage Religious Leaders

Reports of Serbian war atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina involving Orthodox Serbs, Muslim Bosnians and Catholic Croats have provoked outrage among many U.S. religious leaders and is creating some unusual alliances and conflicts.

Amid reports of intensified Serbian aggression in the former Yugoslav republic, many Jews, Muslims and Christians have united in calling for strong action against Serbia’s alleged “ethnic cleansing” campaign.

Jewish organizations, saying they are reminded of efforts by Nazis to exterminate Jews during World War II, called on the United States, United Nations and world leaders to intervene to end the alleged atrocities. The groups included the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Jewish Community Relations Committee of the Jewish Federation Council and Martyrs Memorial and Museum of the Holocaust.

Rabbi Harvey J. Fields, president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California, said Thursday the board was calling on the United Nations and President Bush to strengthen U.N. peacekeeping and humanitarian efforts in the area. Roman Catholic Archbishop Theodore McCarrick of Newark, N.J., who led a delegation of U.S. Catholic leaders to Bosnia and Croatia last month, also described the war, which has left thousands dead and 700,000 homeless, as “reminiscent of the Holocaust.”

On Thursday, as reports of atrocities grew, the New York-based National Council of Churches issued a statement saying its top officers had sent a letter to President Bush asking him to give financial and diplomatic support to the United Nations “to help end the tragic war raging in Bosnia.”

A strong dissenter is the U.S. leader of the Serbian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Christopher of Libertyville, Ill., who charged that reports of Serbian atrocities are a “propaganda campaign.”

“Labeling Serbia the aggressor is like calling the National Guard the aggressor in the Los Angeles riots,” he said.

“No power on Earth” could force Serbs to live in a country ruled by Muslim fundamentalists, he said.