Why serbia attack bosnia

Killing began the next day. As Muslim refugees boarded buses for evacuation, Bosnian Serb forces separated out men and boys from the crowds and took them away to be shot. Thousands were executed and then pushed into mass graves with bulldozers.

Reports suggest some were buried alive, while some adults were forced to watch their children be killed. Women and girls meanwhile were taken out of the queues of evacuees and raped. Witnesses spoke of streets littered with corpses. Under-equipped Dutch soldiers witnessing the Serb aggression did nothing and about 5, Muslims sheltering at their base were handed over.

A UN tribunal in The Hague that investigated the events later spoke of the huge amount of planning that went into the massacre. Buses carrying women and children were systematically search for males, and often troops took young boys and elderly men who would not have been eligible to serve in the army. The effects of that massacre still reverberate to this day. New mass graves and bodies of victims are still being discovered, 25 years after the genocide.

A report blamed the Dutch government and military officials for failing to prevent the killings. The entire government resigned in the wake of the report. In , the country's supreme court upheld a ruling that the Netherlands was partially responsible for deaths at Srebrenica. The commander had gone into hiding after the end of the war in and was not found until , in his cousin's home in northern Serbia. Serbia has since apologised for the crime but still refuses to accept this was a genocide.

All images copyrighted. Massacre survivor: 'The soil is soaked with blood'. Living proof: Surviving a massacre. Mladic Srebrenica footage shown. That certainly proved to be the case in the Pentagon, where Defense Secretary William Perry and JCS Chairman John Shalikashvili took the lead in pushing for the kind of vigorous air campaign that was finally agreed to in London. With presidential elections a little over a year away, the White House in particular felt the need to find a way out.

It was a way out that the president demanded from his foreign policy team in June This strategy for the first time matched force and diplomacy in a way that would break the policy impasse that had strangled Washington for so long. It was debate by the president and his senior advisers over the course of three days in August and, when accepted by Clinton, became the basis for the diplomatic triumph in Dayton three months later.

He began to meet informally with key people on his NSC staff including his deputy, Sandy Berger, and his chief Bosnia aides Sandy Vershbow and Nelson Drew to consider how the United States could help to change the tide of war. It had long been clear that progress toward a negotiated settlement was possible only if the Bosnian Serbs understood that not achieving a diplomatic solution would cost them dearly. For nearly a year, the United States and its Contact Group partners Britain, France, Germany, and Russia had sought to pressure the Bosnian Serb leadership headquartered in Pale into agreeing to commence serious negotiations by convincing Milosevic to cut off economic and, especially, military assistance to the Bosnian Serbs.

Despite being offered various incentives including direct negotiations with the United States and the suspension of U. This left military pressure—the threat or actual use of force against the Bosnian Serbs—as the only real lever to convince Pale that a diplomatic solution was in its interests.

Yet, more than two years of trying to convince the NATO allies of this fact had led nowhere. At each and every turn, London, Paris, and other allies had resisted the kind of forceful measures that were required to make a real impact on the Bosnian Serb leadership.

In their informal discussions, Vershbow and Drew suggested that the only way to overcome this resistance was to equalize the risks between the United States on the one hand and those allies with troops on the ground on the other. This could be achieved either by deploying U. Since the president had consistently ruled out deploying American ground forces to Bosnia except to help enforce a peace agreement, the only way significant military pressure could be brought to bear on the Bosnian Serbs would be after UNPROFOR had been withdrawn.

In June , she once again made her case, presenting Clinton with a passionately argued memorandum urging a new push for air strikes in order to get the Bosnian Serbs to the table. As Clinton well knew, the U. Instead, the emphasis should be on keeping the U. He could accept that there was no consensus for anything beyond continuing a policy of muddling through, or he could forge a new strategy and get the president to support a concerted effort seriously to tackle the Bosnia issue once and for all.

Having for over two years accepted the need for consensus as the basis of policy and, as a consequence, failed to move the ball forward, Lake now decided that the time had come to forge his own policy initiative. A consensus soon emerged on three key aspects of a workable strategy. Second, if a deal was to be struck between the parties, it was clear that such an agreement could not fulfill all demands for justice.

A diplomatic solution that reversed every Bosnian Serb gain simply was not possible. Third, the success of a last-ditch effort to get a political deal would depend crucially on bringing the threat of significant force to bear on the parties. The last three years had demonstrated that without the prospect of the decisive use of force, the parties would remain intransigent and their demands maximalist. Lake asked Vershbow to draft a strategy paper on the basis of this discussion.

The national security adviser also told the president about the direction of his thinking. He specifically asked Clinton whether he should proceed along this path with the knowledge that in a presidential election year the United States would have to commit significant military force either to enforce an agreement or to bring about a change in the military balance of power on the ground. Clinton told Lake to go ahead, indicating that the status quo was no longer acceptable.

The strategy proposed a last-ditch effort to reach a political solution acceptable to the parties. In order to provide the parties an incentive to accept this deal, the strategy also argued for placing American military power preferably alongside allied power, but if necessary alone in the service of the diplomatic effort.

In presenting the parties with the outlines of a possible diplomatic deal, the Unites States would make clear what price each side would have to pay if negotiations failed. A fresh round of talks began with Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic under pressure to accept ethnic partition.

Owen said the Vance-Owen plan was dead, telling a news conference the war has gone too far for an honorable solution. The main body of a man U. Shells killed 12 at a communal tap in the Dobrinja suburb of Sarajevo. A final attempt at peace talks began in Geneva, where Serbs and Croats expressed support for the mediators' proposal to create a new 'union' of three ethnic mini-states. Izetbegovic agreed to constitutional proposals for the 'union,' pending parliament's approval.

The talks turned to borders. Izetbegovic began a fresh boycott of the peace talks, making his return conditional on Serb withdrawal from two strategic mountains over Sarajevo. Mediators announced a tentative accord to place Sarajevo under U. Izetbegovic said he now accepted the partition of Bosnia.

Serb, Croat, and Moslem leaders tentatively agreed to split Bosnia into a union of three ethnic republics. But, the Moslem assembly rejected it as a recipe for Moslem isolation. The Bosnian Moslem parliament rejected the proposed peace deal, demanding the return of land and access to the Adriatic.

The Bosnian government cracked down on a crime ring within the Bosnian army. One hundred forty-six soldiers were arrested under suspicion and one of two ring leaders was killed in a shoot-out in Sarajevo. The Moslem-led army captured the town of Vares in an offensive against Croat forces in central Bosnia.

All three combatants pledged to allow safe passage for aid convoys in Bosnia in U. Izetbegovic returned from four days of Geneva peace talks and said little was achieved.

He opposed the split of Sarajevo. EC foreign ministers invited the warring parties and presidents of Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro to Brussels for peace talks on December Mediators Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg, who took over from Vance, scheduled a new round of top-level peace talks in Geneva. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman said in Geneva that Serbs and Croats had reached agreement on a new Bosnian map which would satisfy Moslem demands for a third of the territory of Bosnia.

The Commander of U. British General Sir Michael Rose, a special forces veteran, was named as his successor. Yugoslavia and Croatia agreed to normalize ties. Bosnian Serbs and Croats signed a similar pact. Talks between Serbs, Moslems and Croats on ending the war in Bosnia achieved nothing as Bosnia's Muslim-led Government rejected the proposed division of Bosnia.

Security Council gave Croatia two weeks to begin pulling its troops out of Bosnia or face possible economic sanctions. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, under threat of U.

Croatian, Bosnian Croat and Moslem representatives signed a U. Bosnian Moslems and Croats ended 10 days of follow-up talks in Vienna with agreement on constitutional details of a federation. President Bill Clinton. Bosnia and Croatia agreed to accept a U. Fighting continued as the Bosnian Serbs refused to accept the plan and threatened to escalate the war further. Moves by Bosnian Serbs to reimpose the siege of Sarajevo were met with international opposition, including pressure from Serbia to accept the plan.

Serbia formally disavowed support and even threatened Bosnian Serb leaders for their refusal to accept the partition plan. The Bosnian Serbs' assembly rejects the latest international peace plan for Bosnia and invites its people to back the decision in a referendum. The Herald. The Council resolves that Serbs should freeze financial assets held in their countries by Bosnian Serbs or entities under their control Federal Information Systems Corporation.

Fighting with Bosnian Muslim and Croat forces allied against Serbs and a renegade Muslim enclave escalated around Bihac, in the northern part of Bosnia along the Croatian border. During the next few months, Muslim and Croat forces briefly achieved some of their greatest battlefield victories and temporarily drove Serbs out of the area, creating the "Bihac pocket" which remained surrounded by Serb-held territory.

Fighting in this area continued even throughout the winter, when fighting in most other areas of Bosnia subsides during a four-month ceasefire. President Clinton says, the US would no longer enforce the arms embargo which denies the Bosnians the right to defend themselves Daily Mail. Bosnian Serb parliament rejects the latest peace plan put forward by the big powers.

Bosnia and Croatia establish military alliance to oppose rebel Serbs. The Croat-Bosnian military pact is designed to counter a similar pact by Serb rebels in Bosnia and Croatia. Observers in Belgrade are increasingly more vocal in their claims that Milosevic has allegedly already decided in favor of the recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia within their international borders and that he is merely waiting for a suitable moment to announce this to the public BBC.

The parliamentary speaker of the self-declared Serb Republic in Bosnia, Momcilo Krajisnik, says that a decision by the President of Serbia to recognize Bosnia would be contrary to the interests of the Serb nation and would directly serve the interests of the Serbs' enemies BBC. Foreign ministers of the NATO countries urge the United Nations to strengthen its crumbling opposition in Bosnia and pledge to use the alliance's military muscle to help reinforce the beleaguered UN forces there International Herald Tribune.

Slobodan Milosevic refuses the US brokered peace settlement to recognize Bosnian government and release UN hostages in exchange for the lifting of the economic sanctions imposed on Yugoslavia The Herald. The Bosnian crisis conference which takes place on 21 July shows unity among major Western leaders on the Western approach to be adopted toward the escalating crisis in the region. Foreign Secretary Malcom Rifkind promises 'substantial and decisive' action should the Serbs attack the so-called 'safe heaven' of Gorazde.

According to analysts, the fall of Srebrenica and Zepa, and the ethnic cleansing following the fall of Srebrenica, have destroyed the prevailing international approach to the Bosnian crisis based on humanitarian aid and use of UN forces to maintain 'safe areas'.

The Bosnian conflict, believe analysts, enters a new stage with escalated military intervention by the big Western powers The Herald. The Bosnian Serbs answer the West ambiguous warning to halt their attacks on the so-called UN 'safe areas' by renewing their assault on the eastern enclave of Zepa.

Bosnian Serb military commander Gen. Ratko Mladic warns that his force is prepared to seize other UN 'safe areas' in eastern Bosnia taking all of them by the autumn, unless the Bosnian troops stop launching attacks from the enclaves The Observer.

The situation around Bihac, continues to be tense with heavy troop build-ups by both Croats and Serbs. The other 'safe area', the central Bosnia town of Tuzla, currently hosts thousands of refugees from Srebrenica and the eastern enclave of Gorazde The Observer.

Croatia agrees to a Bosnian government request for urgent military assistance, particularly in Bihac The Observer. Croatia's conquest of Knin on June 7 triggers an open power struggle in the pan-Serbian camp between the key Serb military commander, Gen.

The warring parties in Bosnia agreed to a peace deal brokered by Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke. The Bosnian Serbs accepted for the first time the terms of the five nation Contact group. The agreement on the basic principles for peace negotiations guarantee the existence of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a single sovereign state, but made up of two distinct entities.

The agreement allows the Bosnian Serbs and Croats to have political links with their ethnic parties elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia but political confederation with either side is strictly forbidden The Herald. The Moslem-led government said 16 of its citizens have been kidnapped while traveling through the Serb-held suburb of Ilidza, to the west of the city along roads opened by NATO forces implementing the Bosnian peace plan.

Reuters World Service. An administration was appointed for the Moslem-Croat half of Bosnia, as a step in building the complex political structure envisaged for the country by the Dayton peace plan. The Reuter European Community Report. Prime Minister Hasan Muratovic of the Bosnia's Moslem-led central government accused the Serbs of blackmail by breaking off contacts in response to the detention of senior Serb officers accused of war crimes.

Muratovic told Reuters that the government will continue to arrest suspected war criminals where possible, and will abide by the findings of the U. The mayor of the Croat part of Mostar demanded again that Mostar be the Croat capital. Times Newspaper Limited. Talks between Bosnia's Prime Minister Hasan Muratovic and his Croatian counterpart Zlatko Matesa aimed at unblocking progress within the Moslem-Croat federation made some progress on economic and legal accords firming up the federation but encountered difficulties on issues concerning arms deliveries Agence France Presse.

Bosnian Muslim rebel Fikret Abdic formed a new party to stand in the federation elections. Haris Silajdzic, Bosnia's former prime minister, announce his plans to run against President Alija Izetbegovic in the forthcoming elections on a platform of ethnic harmony and an end to religiously-based politics International Herald Tribune.

The international War Crimes Tribunal arraigned its first top Bosnian Croat officer and, in separate actions, condemned Serbia and Croatia for the bloodbath that engulfed the former Yugoslavia.

International Herald Tribune. Bosnian Serb leaders said, they will not attend a reconstruction conference as part of an overall Bosnian delegation, and demanded separate representation Reuters World Service.

NATO officials and diplomats said, pressure is growing on NATO troops to arrest war crimes suspects now that Bosnia's former warring parties have complied for the most part with demands to get their troops off the battlefields Agence France Presse.

A trial of a Bosnian Serb charged with torturing and murdering his Muslim and Croat neighbors opened before the first international war crimes tribunal since the postwar judgments at Nuremberg and Tokyo The Washington Post. The Bosnian Serb parliament endorsed the dismissal of a moderate, Rajko Kasagic, as Serb prime minister and backed his replacement by a little-known apparatchik, Gojko Klickovic. Agence France Presse. Mr Carl Bildt, the international peace envoy to Bosnia, said he believed Mr Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leader, was losing his grip on power after he agreed to relinquish significant authority on political, constitutional and other powers to his deputy, Mrs Biljana Plavsic.

Financial Times. Serb media reported that a local board of the Serb Democratic Party nominated Radovan Karadzic as candidate for president of the Bosnian Serb Republic in the forthcoming elections. The Washington Post.

US Secretary of State Warren Christopher said, G7 member states and Russia adopted an action plan to ensure the success of Bosnia's first post-war general elections, set for mid-September.

Major powers said hardline Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic would have to quit immediately or face sanctions for violating the Bosnian peace agreement. The Boston Globe Karadzic signed an agreement pledging to step down July Biljana Plavsic, the Bosnian Serb vice president, would take over as acting president. Under US pressure on the Bosnian leadership, Bosnia and Serbia move a step closer to normalizing relations.

Talks between a senior Bosnian delegation and top Serbian leaders took place in Belgrade for the first time since the start of the Bosnian conflict in April Agence France Presse. The two parties agreed to put together an implementation plan ensuring that they would build a unified central institution after the elections scheduled for Sept.

More than 2, supporters of the Bosnian Serb ruling party rallied in a Sarajevo suburb. The rally was addressed by three candidates of the extreme nationalist party and a Serb Orthodox priest.

Provisional figures from international agencies monitoring the Bosnian border said that 20, people crossed into Serb areas along special secure routes. They constituted less than 10 percent of the mainly Moslem refugees and displaced people eligible to vote in Serb-held areas.

The main nationalist parties that led Bosnia into war four years ago won elections for federal and regional parliaments. At a forum organized by the Islamic community in Croatia, member of the Bosnian Presidency and vice-president of the Bosnian federation, Ejup Ganic called on all Croat refugees to unconditionally return to central.

Bosnian Serb politicians boycotted the inauguration of the country's new joint presidency and parliament. Los Angeles Times.

The Bosnian Serb president, Biljana Plavsic, announced the replacement of the entire general staff, and swore in Major-General Pero Colic as army chief. The Guardians The move by Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic to fire the powerful head of her army was the latest volley in a long-standing battle between civilians and soldiers in the Bosnian Serb leadership.

Mladic, who personally directed the notorious onslaught on the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica last year, was fired along with his senior deputies over the weekend.

General Ratko Mladic, defied dismissal as commander of the Bosnian Serb Army with the support of his senior generals. He met President Biljana Plavsic to discuss a compromise. The attempt to sack Mladic revived the struggle for power between Pale, the hardliners' wartime stronghold outside Sarajevo, and the northern industrial city of Banja Luka which is the new government seat.

The Reuter European Business Report. Croatian police arrested the leader of Mostar's paramilitary mafia, Mladen Naletilic, near Split. In a coordinated action against organized crime, Bosnian Croat police arrested five Croat men and issues warrants for another three. The arrests come after Western diplomats met Croatian government officials and expressed their "strong concern" over the attacks on NATO-led peacekeeping troops in Mostar. Tensions in the divided southern town of Mostar, contested by Moslems and Croats during their war, rose with the Croat police firing on a group of Moslem civilians who wanted to visit a graveyard in the Croat part of town.

Explosions damaged the minaret of the local mosque in Stipanici a southern Bosnia-Herzegovina town settled by Croats and Muslims. The act was harshly condemned in a joint statement by Bosnian federation President and Bosnian Croat leader Kresimir Zubak, as well as by the Herceg-Bosna Canton government and Tomislavgrad municipal leadership.

The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague investigating atrocities issued its first conviction. A Bosnian Serb tavern owner, Dusan Dusko Tadic, was found guilty on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in herding his Muslim neighbors and other civilians into Serbian prison camps and torturing them for what the court called their religion and their politics. Biljana Plavsic dissolved the Bosnian Serb parliament, which was dominated by hardliners, and called for fresh elections.

The hardliners headed by Krajisnik first rejected her decision, then retaliated by calling for presidential elections as well. Following a battle with hardline Serbs who endangered her life Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic invited for a private talk one of her principal hardline foes, Momcilo Krajisnik.

Details of the talks were not revealed. Plavsic has accused the army leadership of interfering in politics, contravening the "laws and constitution".