War chief plans his surrender

SARAJEVO - The wartime commander of the Bosnian Muslim Army says he will surrender next week to the UN war crimes court, which has indicted him over atrocities by foreign Islamic fighters in the 1992-95 war.

Bosnian Muslim officials and some analysts have criticised the indictment of retired General Rasim Delic as an attempt to distribute guilt in the three-cornered war equally but unfairly among Serbs, Croats and Muslims.

They say the Muslims were heavily outgunned and suffered the highest number of casualties.

Bosnia's BHTV1 television has reported that Delic, a highly regarded figure among Bosnian Muslims, would fly to The Hague on Monday to surrender to the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia.

"I am the man who fought for this country ... and a lawful man and as such I cannot act in a different way," Delic said in an interview.

UN prosecutors' spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said Sarajevo authorities had informed the tribunal that Delic would surrender on February 28, but she could not give details of the indictment.

Delic is the sixth Bosnian Muslim charged over war crimes in the conflict, in which between 150,000 and 200,000 people were killed.

The tribunal has altogether indicted more than 120 people from the former Yugoslavia, mostly Serbs.

Two of the four Muslims now being tried or awaiting a UN trial have been charged with responsibility for the crimes committed by Islamic fighters.

Hundreds of the fighters, most of them Arabs, flocked to Bosnia to help in what they saw as an unequal war that was tolerated by the West and aimed at wiping out their fellow Muslims.

They mostly operated in central and northern Bosnia, committing some gruesome atrocities against Serbs and Croats.

Historians of the war have said that the Bosnian army at that time did not have total control of all such units.

- REUTERS