POTOCARI, Bosnia-Herzegovina, (AFP) -Authorities have prepared massive security measures to prevent inter-ethnic violence on the sixth anniversary Wednesday of the Srebrenica massacre, one of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II. (Read photo caption below).
UN spokesman in Sarajevo Douglas Coffman said that some 1,300 Bosnian Serb police, including anti-riot units, would be deployed for the ceremonies organised to remember the more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims believed to have been executed by Serb forces who took over Srebrenica in July 1995.
He said the size of the force will be twice that deployed for last year's anniversary, and around 300 UN police would also be on duty to monitor the work of the local Republika Srpska (RS) officers.
In addition, a representative of the Muslim-Croat federation police is to join each of some 105 buses carrying survivors of the massacre to the events, Coffman said.
Bosnian Serb authorities also ordered roads around Srebrenica sealed off from 8 a.m. (10H00 GMT) until 4 p.m. (14H00 GMT), and all bars closed on Wednesday in Bratunac, 20 kilometers (12 miles) northwest of Srebrenica and a stopping point for the expected 5,000 survivors coming to Srebenica for the ceremonies.
Coffman said the border police in the neighbouring Federal Republic of Yugoslavia would search all vehicles crossing into Bosnia.
"There will also be restriction of movement on roads leading from the Muslim-Croat federation to Republika Srpska," Coffman said.
He said authorities are anxious to avoid a repeat of violent incidents that occurred in May in Banja Luka and Trebinje.
On May 5, a group of angry Serbs attacked Muslims who came to mark the rebuilding of a mosque in Trebinje.
Two days later, some 4,000 Serb protesters attacked Muslims and international officials at a ceremony marking the rebuilding of a mosque destroyed in 1993 in Banja Luka. The incident left a Bosnian Muslim dead and around 30 other people injured.
The NATO-led Stabilization Force increased its presence in the vicinity of Srebrenica Tuesday, an AFP reporter said.
Helicopters were flying over Potocari while US army vehicles were patroling the roads in the vicinity of Srebrenica, the reporter said.
The key feature of the ceremonies will be the laying of a marker stone of a memorial and cemetery for the victims. The stone will be laid in Potocari, a town close to Srebrenica where a contingent of Dutch UN troops guarding the Muslim "safe-haven", but who were overrun by Serb troops, were based.
Bosnia's Muslim-Croat police chief warned Monday that a radical Bosnian Serb group could try to use the anniversary to launch attacks in revenge for the sending of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to the UN war crimes tribunal.
Milosevic, indicted for alleged war crimes committed during the Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in 1998-99, was handed over to the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague on June 28.
The Muslim mayor of Srebrenica, Sadik Sahmetovic, told AFP Tuesday he was not expecting any incidents Wednesday.
"I am convinced that everything will go peacefully," he said.
But an RS police spokesman in Potocari Tuesday said that "incidents cannot be excluded" despite the "significant police presence."
Bosnia's central parliament on Tuesday held a special session to commemorate the massacre at which the Serb president of Srebrenica municipal council, Desnica Radivojevic, called for the arrest of suspected war criminals in Bosnia.
"It might be painful to face the truth, but that has to be done sooner or later..," Radivojevic told AFP at the end of the session. "The perpetrators of this crime are well known and I am sure that they will face justice, because it is impossible for victims to live alongside their torturers."
Bosnian Serb war-time leader Radovan Karadzic and his army commander Ratko Mladic, both indicted by the UN war-crimes tribunal of war crimes comitted in Srebrenica, still remain at large.
Following the Dayton peace agreement that ended the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, the country was split into two entities - the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim Croat Federation.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Bosnian Muslim returnees sit in their destroyed home in the village of Glogova near the wartime U.N. safe zone of Srebrenica July 10, 2001. Bosnians will mark July 11 the sixth anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre when Bosnian Serb forces entered the U.N. protected enclave committing what is seen as the worst war crime in Europe since World War Two. There are still some 18,000 people reported missing. REUTERS/Damir Sagolj