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U.S. official reports Serbian war crimes

John Shattuck, assistant secretary of state for human rights, was in eastern Bosnia collecting evidence, interviewing survivors and checking conditions that war crimes investigators will face in the coming weeks.

"We believe there are up to 7,000 missing, and I'm afraid their fate could very well be very clear from the mass graves and mass executions we've heard about in the area," he told reporters.

Shattuck said survivors have named the abandoned, bombed-out village of Glogova, nestled among snowy hills, as the grave of those killed in one of the worst of the alleged war crimes.

"Up to 2,000 people were herded into a warehouse and then fired upon by grenades and other weapons, and anyone who was left was shot when they left" the town of Kravice, just up the road, Shattuck said.

Kravice was part of the eastern Muslim enclave of Srebrenica that was overrun by the Bosnian Serb forces on July 11, 1995. Shattuck did not explain how or why the bodies were moved from Kravice to Glogova.

Shattuck said he could see blood spatters and massive holes in the warehouse from the heavy weapons and grenades.

"Two thousand missing people very nearby could mean that up to 2,000 people could be buried in this mass grave," Shattuck said

He predicted diggers would begin work at Glogova with the spring thaw.

The war crimes tribunal in The Hague and other human rights investigators have been worried that evidence of graves and possible war crimes could be tampered with the longer the sites are left outside international control.

NATO officials promised yesterday to do their best to protect investigators at alleged mass graves around Bosnia and watch for any attempts to tamper with the sites.

Until now, Bosnian Serbs had blocked outsiders from visiting sites where they are accused of burying thousands of bodies. But yesterday, Shattuck commended his Bosnian Serb hosts as being a "model of cooperation."

"We have had security provided by Bosnian Serb and Serbian authorities," he said. "I have had no restrictions on the places I've gone."

Shattuck also toured Nova Kasaba, another reputed mass grave, and Konjevic Polje, where witnesses say 200 people were shot as they tried to flee along along the road.

In the town of Karakaj, Shattuck said his team looked at a school house and gymnasium where Muslims were reportedly held before being taken out in groups of 30 and shot before open pits.

"This is the evidence many eyewitnesses have provided," he said.

Other reputed sites are at nearby Bratunac and an abandoned mine near Prijedor in the northwest.

The war crimes tribunal, a U.N.-appointed court based in The Hague, the Netherlands, was losing hope that NATO forces would help secure mass grave sites and arrest indicted war criminals.

"We will provide whatever support we can," said a written statement by U.S. Adm. Leighton Smith, commander of the NATO troops enforcing the Bosnian peace plan.

Smith did not say how much military muscle would be needed, but noted NATO soldiers would "provide an environment in which (investigators) can accomplish their missions."

Croats suggest that his probe could undermine the Muslim-Croat federation that has been given 51 percent of Bosnia under the U.S.-brokered peace plan.

Hadrovic said he would push ahead regardless. "In order for there to be a state, there has to be justice," he told The Associated Press.

Shattuck said he believed NATO forces would be securing the alleged war crimes sites in the "very, very near future," after the primary task of separating forces was accomplished.

But Smith, the NATO mission commander, insisted there is no immediate timetable to provide security. He said troops will assist probes by providing a secure environment only after requests from investigators.

The tribunal has so far indicted 52 people -- 45 Serbs and seven Bosnian Croats, including Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and army commander Gen. Ratko Mladic. But only one Bosnian Serb, arrested in Germany, has been brought before the court.