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AI accuses serbs

of right abuses

LJUBLJANA: The human rights group Amnesty International said on Friday thousands of people were missing in Bosnia and that they were probably detained by the Bosnian Serb army or dead.

"There are several thousand people missing from the areas of the former Yugoslavia. We suspect they are in the hands of Bosnian Serb army or dead," said Curt Goering, who led a recent Amnesty International mission to Tuzla in north-eastern Bosnia.

"In the area around Tuzla there is not a single family which knows the whereabouts of all its family members," Goering told a news conference.

Amnesty distributed a report on Bosnia saying that over the past three years there was evidence of systematic human rights abuses against non-Serbs in Bosnian Serb-controlled territory.

"These abuses, which appear to be condoned by the authorities, include shooting, knife attacks, beatings and rape of non-Serbs and may be ultimately aimed at forcing them to leave the area," the report says.

The report was issued at an International Council meeting in Ljubljana.

Amnesty is holding a demonstration in Ljubljana on Friday night, where families of the disappeared will talk.-Reuter