February 9, 2000
The Hague - UN war crimes prosecutors said on Wednesday they would take no action against UN and other officials accused of responsibility for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
A group representing survivors met Chief Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte last week to lodge a complaint that UN officials, including current Secretary General Kofi Annan, bore partial responsibility for the killing of up to 8,000 Bosnian Moslem men in the eastern Bosnian town in July 1995.
"I think some common sense has to be exercised here. It might be theoretically possible for someone to come up with an allegation... but to suggest that the UN in its role as a peacemaker had motives which amount to crimes falling under our jurisdiction is unrealistic," Deputy Prosecutor Graham Blewitt told a news conference. "I think frankly it's nonsense... We will not be taking that particular complaint seriously," he added.
The massacre, carried out by Serb forces, is considered the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War II.
A lawyer for the Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinja group said UN officials deliberately sacrificed Srebrenica, a UN "safe area" for Moslems surrounded by Serb-controlled territory, to pave the way for a carve-up of Bosnia under a peace agreement reached later in 1995.
The group filed complaints against Annan, in charge of UN peacekeeping operations at the time of the massacre, Boutros Boutros-Ghali who was Secretary General, former commanders of UN troops Bernard Janvier and Michael Rose, and Ton Karremans, commander of the Dutch peacekeepers in Srebrenica.
The court has indicted the men accused of being ultimately responsible for the massacre - Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic - on charges of genocide. They remain at large.
