Bosnia Herzegovina

The United States imposed sanctions on Bosnian Serb political leaders Thursday for failing to arrest and turn over war crimes suspects to an international tribunal. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said that, under the sanctions, any assets the Serbian Democratic Party had in the United States would be frozen. In addition, he said, any members of that party or its partner, the Party for Democratic Progress, would be banned from entering the United States.

A Serbian general indicted for war crimes in the siege of Sarajevo in Bosnia's 1992-95 war gave himself up to the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said. Dragomir Milosevic, no relation to former Serb strongman Slobodan Milosevic, was on a list of 19 indictees still at large.

An appeals chamber of the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia ordered the immediate release of Mario Cerkez, a former Bosnian Croat military commander sentenced to 15 years in 2001. The Hague-based court said reasons would be given Dec. 17, when the judgment in the case against Cerkez and co-defendant Dario Kordic will be rendered. Cerkez and Kordic had appealed their convictions.

The European Union on Thursday began its biggest military operation, taking over NATO's peacekeeping mission in Bosnia with 7,000 troops. The operation is a major step in the EU's drive to develop a military arm, an initiative launched after the bloc failed to halt the war that tore Bosnia-Herzegovina apart in the early 1990s.

Forensic experts said they had found the remains of about 60 victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of up to 8,000 Muslims in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. Murat Hurtic, a regional forensic team leader, said up to 100 bodies could be in the grave. Hurtic said the victims were among 720 men who fled Srebrenica in July 1995 and were slain by Bosnian Serb forces in the village of Grbavci. The grave, near the town of Zvornik, is where the bodies were moved to cover up the killings, he said.

A Yugoslav war crimes tribunal at The Hague acquitted Bosnian Serb leader Radislav Brdjanin of genocide after a five-year trial, but convicted him on eight other charges and sentenced him to 32 years in prison. Brdjanin, 56, was the wartime leader of the autonomous Krajina region of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The court said the Serbian campaign of mass murder, torture and deportations fell short of genocide.

Forensic experts completed the excavation of a mass grave and said they had found the remains of 234 people who were killed in the 1992-95 Bosnian war. The site was near the town of Bratunac, northeast of the capital, Sarajevo. Most of the dead appeared to be Bosnian Muslims from Bratunac who were slain by Bosnian Serb forces in 1992, one of the experts said. A smaller number of the victims were believed to have been killed in a 1995 massacre in nearby Srebrenica.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said those hiding former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic were jeopardizing Bosnia's future and demanded that authorities find and hand over the accused war criminal. During a visit to the capital, Sarajevo, Powell also stressed the U.S. commitment to help the Balkan nation, which remains ethnically divided and relatively poor nine years after the end of the war.

Mostar joyfully unveiled its rebuilt 16th century bridge Friday, nearly 11 years after its destruction in war became a symbol of the conflicts that tore Yugoslavia apart. The new Stari Most, or Old Bridge, over the Neretva River, which separates the mainly Muslim side of Mostar from the mainly Croatian side and was a front line during the 1992-95 Bosnian war, was inaugurated during a spectacular ceremony with a guest list of international dignitaries.

In mountains scattered with sawmills and war bones, Zoran Mikevic paints murals of martyrs and saints in the cool half-light of a church. He is reticent about the bloodshed that ruined this land a decade ago. But when pressed, he hops off his scaffolding and deifies Bosnia's most notorious war crimes fugitive. "Radovan Karadzic led his people through a difficult time," said Mikevic, his voice softly echoing through the Serbian Orthodox church here.