Bosnians

A Bosnian Serb sought by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague has been arrested in Russia, the RIA Novosti news agency quoted a Siberian official as saying. Dragan Zelenovic was arrested in Siberia, the report said. He was a military police officer indicted for alleged crimes against humanity during the 1992 assault on the Bosnian town of Foca. Regional prosecutors have prepared documents needed for Zelenovic's extradition, the Interfax news agency said.

A former Bosnian Croat special forces soldier pleaded guilty to war crimes at the Yugoslav tribunal as part of a deal with prosecutors. Miroslav Bralo, 37, confessed to rape, torture, murder and using prisoners as human shields to protect Bosnian Croat soldiers from sniper fire. Bralo was a member of a unit responsible for attacks on Bosnian Muslim villages in the Lasva Valley of central Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1993.

The Chinese island of Macao, a Renaissance printing house in Belgium and a war-ravaged Bosnian bridge were among 17 cultural sites added to the U.N.'s World Heritage list last week. UNESCO, the U.N. educational and cultural body, also added archeological finds in Bahrain dating from 2300 B.C., the Albanian Ottoman town of Gjirokastra, Cuba's colonial town of Cienfuegos and Greek and Roman era tombs in Italy. The new sites bring the global list of cultural sites to 628.

Balancing in the saddle, 10-year-old Razija Ramulj squeals with joy as the chestnut mare twitches and then lets her stroke its tousled mane. Teachers and classmates crowd around to applaud the mentally handicapped girl's efforts to caress the horse, and 72-year-old Jean Claude Carreau cheers the loudest, his husky "Bravo! Bravo!" booming across the farmyard. There is tragedy behind Carreau's joy.

Bosnia-Herzegovina's state court handed down its first war crimes sentence, sending an Iraqi-born Bosnian to prison for five years for helping foreign Islamic fighters abduct three Croat civilians. The court said in a statement that Abduladhim Maktouf had helped abduct the civilians in late 1993 and driven the van in which they were taken to a detention camp in the central Bosnian village of Orasac.

As the 10th anniversary of the massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica approaches, human rights groups are pressing the Serbian government to confront the atrocities committed during the Bosnian war. Until very recently, they have had little hope of success. But the surprise disclosure of a nearly decade-old video that shows Serb forces executing six unarmed, emaciated Bosnian Muslims has altered the public debate in ways nothing else probably could have.

Paddy Ashdown, the top international administrator in Bosnia-Herzegovina, fired Dragan Covic, a Bosnian Croat, from the country's tripartite presidency Tuesday after Covic refused to step down in the face of corruption charges. Covic is the third presidency member to be sacked or forced out under international pressure since the administrator's office was set up to oversee implementation of the Dayton peace accords after the 1992-95 war in Bosnia. Ashdown and U.S.

A senior Bosnian Serb general indicted for genocide in the 1995 massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica will surrender this week at the U.N. war crimes tribunal, the Serbian government said. Lt. Col. Vinko Pandurevic was to travel to the Netherlands on Wednesday to give himself up to the U.N. court at The Hague. In a TV interview, he said he felt morally responsible for the atrocities, but neither knew of the crimes nor was in a position to prevent them.

A former Bosnian Serb army officer surrendered to the United Nations war crimes tribunal after being charged in the Srebrenica massacre of nearly 8,000 Bosnian Muslims a decade ago. Drago Nikolic, 47, a former lieutenant in charge of security during the Bosnian Serb army onslaught on Srebrenica, turned himself in at the U.N. detention unit outside The Hague, Netherlands, the tribunal said. Last week, Mico Stanisic, a former Bosnian Serb interior minister, surrendered to the tribunal.

The Bosnian Serb army sheltered war crimes suspect Gen. Ratko Mladic in an underground bunker within the last six months, the head of the European Union peacekeeping force said. Mladic, the Bosnian Serb wartime commander, and Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic are the U.N. war crimes tribunal's most-wanted fugitives. The court, based in the Netherlands, wants to try them on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity stemming from Bosnia's 1992-95 war. British Major Gen.