Bosnian officials yesterday began exhuming the up to 300 bodies of mostly Muslim war victims believed buried in a labyrinthine cave just south-east of Bihac, north-western Bosnia. Some of the bodies still had identification cards. Mr Ervin Lipovic, an alpine climber working for the excavating team, said the bodies were interspersed with rubbish, and that the stench below ground was "horrible". Barrels containing acid were also found in the cave.
Tens of thousands of people are still listed as missing from the 3 1/2year Bosnian war. Many are believed to have been slaughtered and dumped into pits, both natural and man-made.
The U.N. war crimes tribunal has been using the evidence gathered from exhumations so far to build legal cases against war crimes suspects accused of committing atrocities during the six-month war in Croatia and the Bosnian war.
The cave near Hrgar consists of a moss-filled, 40-metre shaft that splits into several tunnels. Excavators enter the shaft in a large metal basket that slides down a metal wire connected to a generator above-ground.
"We won't have a real idea of what we are dealing with until all the material is removed," said Mr Joseph Cruz, a human rights field worker among other U.N. officials monitoring the excavation. "There is no real idea of how far the hole goes down there."
Meanwhile, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) on Tuesday confirmed its plans to go ahead with September 13th-14th municipal elections in Bosnia, despite a violent political struggle in Bosnian Serb territory.
"There is no consideration at present of postponing those elections, that's an important message to everybody in Bosnia and Herzegovina," OSCE Bosnia mission head, Mr Robert Frowick, told reporters.
Speaking after a meeting of the Danish, Swiss and Polish troika of past, present and forthcoming OSCE chairmen, Mr Frowick said there were signs compromise with opponents of the elections could be reached ahead of the poll deadline.
"The elections are an integral part of the peace process and therefore it's extremely important to stick to the plans and the timetables that have been worked out," said Danish Foreign Minister, Mr Nils Helveg Petersen, the current OSCE chairman.
Supporters of Western-backed President Biljana Plavsic are struggling against backers of indicted war criminal, Radovan Karadzic, for control of the institutions of power in Bosnian Serb territory, including state television and the police.
Mr Frowick, a U.S. diplomat, said the Plavsic camp was keen to proceed with the elections and he believed Karadzic hardliners, based in the mountain stronghold of Pale, could be persuaded to drop their threat of a boycott.
"The Pale area is more uncertain. There are issues that will have to be dealt with, we are meeting with the leaders there . . . practically every day to try to work our way through this process. I still believe that we'll be able to do it," he said.
As Bosnian Serb resistance to the poll has grown, the West has been lobbying Russia - which has considerable influence over the Serbs - to support the elections.
Mr Frowick said he had no news from Monday night's talks between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, Mr Nikolai Afanasyevsky, and Karadzic aide, Mr Momcilo Krajisnik. But he said ideas for a possible compromise package had been raised at other meetings.