WAR CRIMES investigators said yesterday they would soon start work in Bosnia and a US envoy demanded prisoners be freed as international attention turned to bringing justice to the country as well as peace.
A leader of Serb refugees living in Serb held areas of Sarajevo said thousands were organising a mass exodus by a January 31st deadline rather than live in the city under a Muslim led government, as the Dayton peace plan demands.
Judge Richard Goldstone, head of the International Tribunal on War Crimes in former Yugoslavia, said in Sarajevo investigators would start work in the field "in the very, very near future" with the help of international peace keepers.
The South African judge held talks with Admiral Leighton Smith, commander of the Nato led Ifor (Implementation Force), and later with Mr Carl Bildt, the international community's top civilian representative in post war Bosnia.
His visit followed an unprecedented tour of sites of alleged war atrocities on Serb held territory on Sunday by the US human rights envoy, Mr John Shattuck.
Mr Shattuck saw spattered blood and holes in the walls of a warehouse. Survivors say grenades were fired at the building killing a large number of Muslims held inside after they were seized during the Serbs' capture of the former UN "safe area" of Srebrenica last July.
He also inspected a schoolhouse and gymnasium where, according to reports by survivors, people were held before being taken out in groups of 30 into woods nearby and shot.
Mr Shattuck visited the devastated village of Glogova, 16 km north west of Srebrenica, where he said 2,000 people were believed buried.
A Reuter reporter saw a human bone, with flesh and rags attached, protruding from a suspected mass grave nearby.
The Bosnian Serb "interior minister", Mr Dragan Kijac, whose police escorted Mr Shattuck to the sites, said later that his trip proved nothing about alleged war crimes.
Mr Shattuck said he was keen to provide momentum for investigations by Judge Goldstone's tribunal. "Security will be needed, for grave investigations and Ifor has a duty . . . to provide assistance to war crimes investigators, he said.
Commanders of Ifor have been quick to deny reports that their troops will guard such sites pending investigations.
"We've seen statements made, by Assistant Secretary Shattuck over the past 12 hours. Please understand these are statements, representing the view of an individual who is outside Ifor," the Ifor spokesman, Mr Mark Rayner said in Sarajevo yesterday.
Meanwhile Mr Shattuck said in Belgrade he had "no differences of opinion with Ifor."
Mr Shattuck said after spending the night in Belgrade that his new priority was the fate of hundreds of prisoners of war still held by all three sides, despite a January 19th deadline for their release under the Dayton peace plan.
"All prisoners who've been visited by the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] should be released," he told journalists.
. Admiral Leighton Smith said later he had struck a deal with Judge Gold stone that Ifor would provide assistance to investigators but would not guard suspected mass grave sites.