Posted on 09/18/2003 8:19:14 AM PDT by NativeNewYorker
Sarajevo (dpa) - More than 20,000 people are expected to gather in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica on Saturday to attend a commemoration for the victims killed there during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, an official said Thursday in Sarajevo.
The mayor of the former Bosnian Moslem enclave of Srebrenica Abdurahman Malkic said huge crowds were expected to attend the opening of the Memorial Centre in the village of Potocari near Srebrenica, built in memory of the victims of the 1995 massacre in that area.
Former United States president Bill Clinton is due to formally open the Memorial, paying his tribute to up to 8,000 Bosnian Moslem men massacred on 11 July 1995 when Bosnian Serb troops captured Srebrenica.
During his visit to Srebrenica Clinton is expected to address the ceremony and meet with the relatives of the Srebrenica victims gathered in the Association of the Mothers of Srebrenica.
``(Former) President Clinton was best choice when it was about the person to formally open the Memorial in Potocari,'' Srebrenica's mayor Malkic said.
Clinton's role in stopping the 1992-1995 bloodshed and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Malkic said, meant he was a suitable choice to open the memorial.
Besides Clinton, top Bosnian Moslem officials and the head of the country's Islamic Community, as well as foreign representatives in Bosnia-Herzegovina would attend the ceremony.
More than eight million convertible marks (four million U.S. dollar), according to Malkic, have been invested in building the Memorial, while more than 500,000 convertible marks (250,000 U.S. dollar) was spent on organizing the opening ceremony.
The cornerstone for the Memorial was laid in July 2001 on the sixth anniversary of the massacre at the very spot the violence occurred. The identified remains of 882 of the victims are now buried there.
The remains of another 107 victims to be buried at the cemetery within the Memorial were transported on Thursday to Srebrenica.
Some 1,800 victims of the Srebrenica massacre, according to the Bosnian Commission on Missing Persons, have been so far identified out of more than 5,000 bodies exhumed from numerous mass graves in eastern Bosnia.
The identification process by complex DNA analysis could take years to identify the rest of the remains.
Masovic also said the Commission would soon start to exhume another four large mass graves, believed to be hiding remains of the Srebrenica victims.
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