Banja Luka, Bosnia; 3 September 2002 (RFE/RL) -- A Republika Srpska government committee has prepared a report denying that a massacre of Muslims took place in Srebrenica in 1995. The group is set to present the report to the government of Bosnia's Serbian entity later today. An independent Serbian television station, Alternative TV, reported ahead of the document's release that it claims some 2,000 Muslim soldiers died while fighting Serbian troops at Srebrenica.
Other accounts of the incident, including survivors' statements, say that Serbian troops overran the UN-administered "safe zone" at Srebrenica and slaughtered nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
A spokesman for UN war crimes tribunal, Jim Landale, told RFE/RL that the new report directly contradicts the UN's evidence: "Any claim that the number of victims after the fall of the Srebrenica enclave was around the 2,000 mark, and most of those killed in battle, is an absolutely outrageous claim, it's utterly false, and it flies in the face of all of the evidence painstakingly collected in the investigation into the tragedy."
UN-led investigators are currently exhuming mass gaves to collect evidence surrounding the Srebrenica killings.
Other accounts of the incident, including survivors' statements, say that Serbian troops overran the UN-administered "safe zone" at Srebrenica and slaughtered nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys.
A spokesman for UN war crimes tribunal, Jim Landale, told RFE/RL that the new report directly contradicts the UN's evidence: "Any claim that the number of victims after the fall of the Srebrenica enclave was around the 2,000 mark, and most of those killed in battle, is an absolutely outrageous claim, it's utterly false, and it flies in the face of all of the evidence painstakingly collected in the investigation into the tragedy."
UN-led investigators are currently exhuming mass gaves to collect evidence surrounding the Srebrenica killings.