DESOLATION HIDES CROATIAN KILLING FIELD

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 20, 1993                   TAG: 9302200060
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A12   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: OVCARA, CROATIA                                LENGTH: Medium
DESOLATION HIDES CROATIAN KILLING FIELD
It is a desolate, chilling place. Rolls of barbed wire encircle the frozen mud, and wooden pegs and red tags mark the graves of about 200 Croats taken from a hospital and shot by the forest's edge.
No one denies the executions took place after the November 1991 fall of nearby Vukovar, which concluded a three-month siege that was the Croatian war's bloodiest battle. But the killers, presumably Serbs, have not been identified.
Finding overwhelming evidence of atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council on Thursday called for the creation of the first war-crimes tribunal since World War II.
Excavations begun last fall in the cornfield at Ovcara have turned up evidence for what may be one of the first trials. Digging is to resume next month, when the thaw begins.
In the meantime, the field is guarded by six Russian soldiers, sent by the United Nations.
Survivors say several hundred patients and staff, including some Croatian soldiers, were rounded up at the Vukovar hospital and taken to cow sheds at the isolated Ovcara farm to the south. Then they were taken out in groups of 20 to be shot.
A senior Serb military commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the killings were carried out in the confusion that followed the battle by Serb irregulars, to whom the federal army had turned over the prisoners.
Thousands of Serb fighters swarmed into Vukovar when the Croat defenders of the Danube port of 50,000 finally ended their resistance on Nov. 17, 1991.
After the Croatian conflict ended in a U.N.-brokered truce at the end of 1991, peacekeepers were sent to the Serb-held regions that cover about one-third of Croatia.
The war erupted again last month when Croats attacked Serbs near the Adriatic coast. The latest fighting has been intense, but it has not spread to the Vukovar area, in eastern Croatia.
After the accidental discovery of buried human bones in Ovcara last year, international forensic experts began unearthing the graves.
The search is to resume next month, said Col. Pierre Peeters, the Belgian who is deputy commander of U.N. forces in eastern Croatia.
The local Serb authorities do not object to the investigation, but feel the international community has not shown the same level of interest in uncovering Croatian atrocities against Serbs, Peeters said.
At the Ovcara field, a Russian sentry tried to keep his back to the biting wind.
A sergeant who identified himself only as Nikolai sat on his bunk in the Russians' square white shed, peering out at the sentry.
"No need for more men to stand guard out there," he said. "Nobody ever comes near this Godforsaken place anyway."

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB