Red Cross Plans Visit to Serb Camps This Week

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina —  Red Cross officials said Sunday that they intend this week to visit Serbian-run detention camps that are at the center of allegations of murder, rape and beatings.

“We received . . . authorization to visit the detention centers in Bosnia, and we are going to proceed without delay,” said Claudia Grassi, an official of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Belgrade.

Journalists who visited camps over the weekend said prisoners were apparently being transferred from the most notorious sites before inspections could begin.

Serbian leaders have countered reports of atrocities against their prisoners with allegations of the torture and killing of Serbs in camps run by Muslims and Croats.

Serbian forces threatened to launch a final assault on Gorazde, the last government hold-out in eastern Bosnia, to rescue 2,500 Serbs they said were being held in a concentration camp.

Bosnian Muslims and Croats claim Serbs run 94 camps in Bosnia-Herzegovina holding about 130,000 people. But Serbs claim about 40,000 of their people are currently held in 45 Muslim and Croatian camps.

“There will be no more waiting and hesitation,” the Belgrade-based Tanjug news agency quoted a Serbian commander as saying. “Gorazde will soon join the free cities of the region.”

Serbs opposed to Bosnia’s independence have captured about two-thirds of Bosnia’s territory and have surrounded the capital.

Sarajevo was reported to be mostly quiet Sunday, but fighting was reported on the fringes of the republic. The war has killed at least 8,000 people, and up to 50,000 according to some estimates. More than 1 million have fled their homes.

Germany welcomed 5,000 more refugees over the weekend, including a baby born en route. The last of six trains from Zagreb was delayed because one of the refugees, Emina Debic, 25, went into labor. A doctor boarded at an unscheduled stop in western Bavaria to assist the birth of a 9-pound, 6-ounce boy.

They join 7,500 compatriots in the only Western country to have taken in large numbers of refugees from the Balkan state. Officials say there are no plans to allow more refugees into Germany for now.

In Pakistan on Sunday, Bosnian Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic applauded Iran’s call for an Islamic army to fight the Serb-led assault in Bosnia and condemned the almost daily refusals of Europe and the United States to intervene.

“The most painful of all facts is that civilized Europe is ready to invent so many excuses to not do anything,” he said.