Sarajevo, Feb 08: Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has donated funds for a memorial to the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre in Eastern Bosnia, a Bosnian Muslim news agency has reported. Arafat donated five thousand dollars on behalf of Palestinian people for building of the memorial and cemetery for thousands of Bosnian Muslims killed in Europe's worst atrocity since world war ii, the news agency of Bosnia's Islamic community, Mina, reported yesterday. The funds were provided through the Palestinian Embassy in Sarajevo, it said.

The head of Bosnia's Muslim community, Mustafa Ceric, than Ked Arafat for the donation, voicing hope that the "question of Palestine will be resolved as soon as possible in a just manner," Mina added. Preparatory works at the site of the memorial and cemetery began last October in Potocari, a former UN base in what is now the Serb-run suburb of Srebrenica.

The site was chosen for the memorial by Bosnia's international representative after overcoming strong opposition from local Serb authorities. Some 7,000 Bosnian Muslims are believed to have been killed by Bosnian Serb forces after they overran Srebrenica in July 1995, even though the area had been proclaimed a UN-protected zone.

Over 6,000 bodies of Srebrenica victims, exhumed so far from mass graves near the former UN enclave, are stored in morgues in the north western Bosnian town of Tuzla and Visoko, near Sarajevo. The remains are to be buried in Potocari.

Bureau Report