Report: No Cover-Up of Bosnia Incident

An independent inquiry into allegations that the Dutch Defense Ministry hushed up the role played by its forces in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Bosnian war ruled that there had been no deliberate cover-up. But it said the ministry had been totally unprepared for the wave of publicity that followed the 1995 fall to Bosnian Serb forces of Srebrenica, a Muslim town declared a safe zone by the United Nations and guarded by Dutch troops, and it slammed the ministry’s “amateur handling” of information on the affair. Lines of communication between senior Defense Ministry officials and the army were poor, the report said. As a result, then-Defense Minister Joris Voorhoeve failed to obtain a copy of a dossier containing highly critical statements by members of the Dutch U.N. battalion until two years later.