UNITED NATIONS, Dec. 19 -- The United States implied Tuesday it will block Belgrade's attempts to re-enter the United Nations unless Serbs cooperate with war crimes investigators on the massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica. U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright made the statement in reaction to a Serb document -- addressed to the U.N. Security Council -- claiming that Bosnian Serbs were not responsible for the killing of about 6,000 Muslims after the fall of Srebrenica in July. Albright said the document, sent by Serb charge d'affaires at the United Nations, former Foreign Minister Vladislav Jovanovic, was 'an insult to the intelligence of Security Council members.' Albright said Jovanovic's document was 'preposterous' and a 'big lie.' 'They have to cooperate with the war crimes tribunal before we can even consider having the former Yugoslavia readmitted' to the United Nations, Albright said following a closed-door session of the council, at which the Serb document was discussed and rejected by most council members. Following the signing of the U.S-brokered peace agreement by the presidents of Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina last Thursday in Paris, Belgrade has demanded that it be readmitted to the world organization. The union of Serbia and Montenegro, the remnant of the six-republic Yugoslav federation, is also referred to as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. It was expelled from the U.N. General Assembly in 1993 on charges of fomenting and assisting the Bosnian Serbs' 'ethnic cleansing' campaigns against Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In his letter to the council, Jovanovic said the deaths at Srebrenica were the result of 'disorder and conflicts within the Bosnian Muslim army.'
'In the clashes that ensued, those units which wanted to continue fighting were mercilessly killing those who wanted to surrender and were in favor of a cease-fire,' Jovanovic said. He said reports of the killings were used by the Bosnian government for propaganda. He called on the Security Council to conduct an independent investigation and to stop discussing a draft resolution submitted by the United States to seek Serb cooperation in the investigation of the massacre. The investigation is being carried out by the U.N. war crimes tribunal at the Hague in the Netherlands. Washington has provided the tribunal with satellite photographs of what it described as mass graves containing thousands of bodies of those killed following the capture of Srebrenica. U.N. officials reported that following the Serbs' takeover of Srebrenica in July, between 3,500 and 8,000 Muslim men were rounded up by Serbs and never seen again. News reports and the U.S. intelligence photographs indicated the men were massacred and buried at a stadium outside Srebrenica. In an unrelated development, U.N. officials complained Tuesday that U.N. troops were unjustly blamed for the failure to restore peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina prior to the accord signed in Paris last week. The United Nations was scheduled to turn over its Balkan command to NATO at a ceremony at Sarajevo airport Wednesday. Many of the 21,000 U. N. troops in Bosnia-Herzegovina will transfer to NATO command and shed their U.N. uniforms. 'For more than three years, U.N. personnel in Bosnia worked to contain the conflict and lighten the burden of suffering civilians,' said U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi in advance of the command changeover. 'They were not sent there to stop the war,' he said, 'Yet they were asked to shoulder the blame for the lack of peace.' An estimated 110 peacekeepers died in the former Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1995, more than 800 were wounded and hundreds were held hostage. Expressing bitterness on the eve of the U.N. troops' pullout, Fawzi rejected criticism of the U.N. mission in Bosnia, blaming its lack of success on inadequate resources as well as the conflicting orders the peacekeepers were given. 'On the one hand you are given a Chapter 6 mandate and on the other you are told to enforce an operation under Chapter 7, and at the same time you are not given the resources to do so, not given the troops and not given the equipment to do it,' Fawzi said. Chapter 6 of the U.N. Charter does not allow peacekeepers to use force while Chapter 7 allows them to use force to defend themselves and enforce peace. But U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali told reporters Monday at a press conference that accepting criticism was part of his job. 'To be a civil servant is to be trained that nobody will say, 'Thank you.' You have to accept this,' he said. 'We are doing our job.'
