BOSNEWS digest 447 -- 28/10/95

From: Nermin Zukic <n6zukic@sms.business.uwo.ca>

Bosnia-Herzegovina News Directory

CONTENTS

[01] LATEST DEVELOPMENTS ON THE DIPLOMATIC FRONT AND ON THE GROUND IN THE BALKANS

After a second straight day of talks today, Russian Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and Secretary of Defense William Perry have still not resolved differences in their plans for integrating Russian troops into the planned NATO-led force to implement a peace accord in Bosnia. Russia has refused to allow its troops to serve under NATO command, while the U.S. and its allies have insisted on overall NATO control. State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said that NATO is prepared to carry out the mission without Russian troops participating if no compromise is reached. A preliminary meeting between Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, and Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic scheduled to be held in Moscow on October 31 was cancelled today due to Russian President Yeltsin's ill health. The three Balkan leaders will attend peace talks at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, beginning on November 1.

Bosnian Serb officials reportedly offered to allow international human rights organizations access to regions of Serb-controlled territory where thousands of Muslim and other non-Serb men and boys might have been massacred or are possibly being detained in concentration camps. However, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck said, "Words are words until there's action." Two to three thousand Muslim men and boys remain missing from the Banja Luka region. They were part of a group of several thousand non-Serbs that Serbian forces expelled from the region earlier this month. Many observers fear that the missing men and boys have been massacred, just as thousands were executed in mass killings in Srebrenica three months ago. Bosnian President Izetbegovic said yesterday that peace can not come to Bosnia unless all war criminals are removed from power.