U.S. Troops to Aid in Probe of Bosnia Mass Grave Sites

Marking an important step in the U.S. role in securing Bosnia’s peace, American soldiers will provide limited security for U.N. war crimes investigators this week as they begin examining suspected mass graves, officials said Sunday.

Word that American soldiers are about to offer support to the gruesome, politically sensitive work beginning Tuesday near the former “safe area” of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina coincided with a visit to the country Sunday by Defense Secretary William J. Perry, who said he fully supports the plan.

Since their arrival here three months ago, U.S. troops have refrained from establishing a presence around suspected mass graves near the former Muslim enclave, preferring instead to focus on the more traditional peacekeeping work of disarming Bosnia’s warring factions and helping civilians move about the countryside safely.

U.S. troops have made routine road patrols around Srebrenica but until now have made only one reconnaissance tour of the suspected grave sites.

On Tuesday, however, troops from the 1st Armored Division’s 2nd Brigade are scheduled to begin providing “area security” for investigators from the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia as they begin the job of finding out exactly what atrocities occurred during and after the fall of Srebrenica in July.

American troops have been assigned just four relatively narrow tasks. They will act as a communications link between the investigators and the multinational peacekeeping force in Bosnia; they will make sure no organized local military forces approach during the investigations; they will accommodate and feed the U.N. investigators at the Army’s nearest base camp; and they will offer first aid and help with broken-down vehicles if needed.

Equally important is what the U.S. soldiers will not do: They will not exhume bodies or approach the grave sites but will remain at a distance, staying in touch with hand-held radios. Nor will American soldiers drive the U.N. investigators through Bosnia in U.S. Army vehicles.

“We are not providing bodyguards for the” war crimes investigators, said Col. Mark Brzozowski, spokesman for Task Force Eagle, the American component of the multinational peacekeeping force.

Brzozowski added that if the investigators run into serious trouble with hostile Serbs, the American soldiers will step in, “but the first priority is for the local [Serbian] police force to establish order.”

Adm. Leighton W. Smith, the commander of the NATO-led peace force in Bosnia, told reporters covering Perry’s visit that he does not expect any major confrontations when investigators begin their search for mass graves and other evidence of atrocities.

“There may be some demonstrations,” Smith said. “This obviously is a very emotional issue. But I don’t anticipate that there will be problems” for the U.S. troops.

Brzozowski declined to say how many U.S. soldiers will help out with the operation but predicted the number could range from 30 to 100 people. “It all depends on the terrain,” he said. The soldiers are expected to arrive in tanks and armored vehicles.

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Srebrenica was a U.N.-protected Muslim enclave until it was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces last summer. As many as 8,000 Muslim men disappeared as they tried to escape the onslaught. Few doubts remain that the Muslims were hunted down and killed as they fled and that their bodies lie in at least 32 suspected mass graves near the city.

Responsibility for the Srebrenica killings could extend all the way up the chain of command to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic. The two men have been indicted by the U.N. tribunal on war crimes charges but remain in power, despite calls by Bosnian government officials for North Atlantic Treaty Organization peacekeepers to seize them.

Witnesses have offered testimony on the alleged Srebrenica massacre, and now that the snow is melting it has become possible to excavate the suspected mass graves and bolster the prosecution’s case against those believed to have ordered the deaths.

In postwar Bosnia, Srebrenica lies in Serbian territory, in the sector of the country where U.S. troops are operating. Human rights advocates have repeatedly called on U.S. troops to take an active role in assisting the United Nations’ war crimes investigators, who are based at The Hague.

The Army, however, has studiously avoided doing anything that might look as if it were ganging up on the Bosnian Serbs. Commanders argue that putting too much pressure on the alleged war criminals might damage the fragile peace process.

That process got a boost Sunday when Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat federation regrouped to save a shaky union.

Croat and Muslim officials signed an agreement to jointly collect customs duties starting today and use them to finance the moribund federation. They also agreed on a green-white-and-red flag, to fuse financial structures and to form local governments across federation territory, wire services reported.

During his visit Sunday, Perry toured U.S. ground facilities near Tuzla and met senior Russian commanders at an American camp close to Tuzla’s air base. He said the Russian presence in Bosnia showed “that NATO and Russia can work successfully together.”

Perry then flew to Sarajevo, where he held talks with NATO commanders and with acting Bosnian President Ejup Ganic. In response to journalists’ questions about possible NATO assistance in arresting Karadzic and Mladic, Ganic said he was “begging” the international peace enforcers to make the arrests.