Research halves Bosnia war death toll

SARAJEVO - The death toll from the Bosnian war, which ended 10 years ago this week, was half of the widely used figure of about 200,000, a leading Bosnian war crimes researcher said in an interview on Wednesday.

"Let me be clear, this is still an extremely high figure but there is a big difference now that people cannot irresponsibly use inflated numbers for their political goals," said Mirsad Tokaca, who heads the Sarajevo-based Investigation and Documentation Center (IDC).

He said work to establish the exact number of Muslims, Serbs and Croats killed in the 1992-95 war should be completed in early 2006.

Tokaca estimated the number of victims at between 100,000 and 150,000 a year ago.

"We are at 93,000 now and that should rise to 100,000, give or take," said the ethnic Muslim (Bosniak) who has headed the 450,000-euro project funded by the Norwegian government since early 2004.

"We should come out with full preliminary results by March after which the number could be changed ... but only slightly," he told Reuters.

The ethnic breakdown of the victims of the war, for which the term "ethnic cleansing" was coined to describe large-scale killings and expulsions of members of other ethnic groups, remained unchanged from Tokaca's estimate a year ago.

"It is about 70 per cent Bosniaks, slightly under 25 per cent Serbs, slightly under five per cent Croats and about one per cent of the others," he said.

He said the multi-ethnic team of 12 professionals and several volunteers combed military, civilian, non-governmental and a number of other records and sources throughout Bosnia.

The initial, computerized, database included about 300,000 names as many people appeared on several different records listed either as soldiers, police officers or civilians that were killed or missing.

Once it has established the full database, which will be made available on the Web, Tokaca's team will produce an analysis with ethnic, regional, age, sex and time breakdown.

"I can only say now that it will produce some stunning conclusions but it is too early for me to go into details," said Tokaca, who has investigated war crimes for 13 years and cooperated closely with UN investigators.

Tokaca has said the project is of invaluable importance for the Balkan country's reconciliation process.

- REUTERS