UR TV CAST

“The engine sounded unusual,” Mr Kristovic said, but the fog was so heavy he could barely see across the road.Mr and Mrs Deplica were inside their house, which has terraced balconies facing the sea, but went out in the rain to investigate the roar “The noise was unusual,” Mr Deplica said. “The normal flight path is on the far side of that hill past the church and straight on – instead, it came overhead,” said Anto Kristovic, a cafe owner. “We are really sorry, it’s a great tragedy.”In Srebreno, which lies between Brgat and Plat, it was the same story. “It flew right over us” said Luce Basic, who returned to her home in the war-damaged village only three weeks ago.”It was much louder than usual – when the planes are landing at Cilipi [airport] they go much further out towards the sea,” she added. “After it disappeared again into the fog we heard a loud noise as if he was taking off,” added her husband, Miho, suggesting that the pilot had tried to climb out of danger. “The sound changed – and then nothing.”From the testimony of local villagers, it seems the plane flew in a straight line, parallel to the course it should have taken, two to three kilometres north-east of the correct pass, which is marked by radio beacons in Kolocep, Lokrum and Cavtat.The pilot contacted the tower to say he was over Kolocep and descending normally; but instead of passing Lokrum, he flew over Gornji Brgat, a village three kilometres inland and eight kilometres from the crash site.

We said to one another, the plane must be lost, it won’t fare well” said Ana Duplica, who lives on the coast road in the village of Plat, at the foot of the peak. One woman, a crew member, was found alive in the tail section but died on her way to hospital.But US sources said most of the bodies were disfigured beyond recognition; they will be flown today to Dover air base in Delaware, so that forensic experts can determine the identities of 33 Americans and two Croats.President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia, who declared yesterday a national day of mourning, was expected in Dubrovnik today for a farewell ceremony.A team of 26 US investigators sifted through the debris – most of the fuselage was shattered on impact – searching for an explanation, their difficult task compounded by the absence of a black-box flight recorder aboard the jet.”The plane appeared from the clouds like a ghost. Srebrenica was the scene of some of the worst atrocities that were committed during the Balkan war.. EMMA DALY

Dubrovnik and AGENCIES
On barren grey peaks soaring from the sparkling blue water of the Adriatic, the brilliant white tail of a US military jet marks the spot where 35 people died on Wednesday afternoon. Ilija Simic, an official in Serbia’s commission for war crimes said he expected the Hague tribunal to react to the Mrkonjic Grad finds. He insisted that they constituted clear evidence that war crimes were committed in the region.nWashington – A coalition of human rights groups asked an American court to make the US State Department and the CIA release their records on the massacre of Bosnian Muslims by Serbs last summer in the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia. There were also some soldiers in the grave.Some women were found buried in their nightgowns, he added.

But before they left, Bosnian Croats troops burned and looted many homes.The victims were mostly civilians, including women, with the youngest aged 22 and the oldest over 90, Mr Stankovic said. All but one of the bodies, thought to be Serbs killed last autumn, showed signs of violence, Zoran Stankovic, who headed a team of experts digging up the grave in Mrkonjic Grad, told Serbia’s Tanjug news agency.
John Gerns, an expert who is working with the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague was present during the dig and the autopsies, he said. “We filmed all the bodies immediately and in the presence of international observers,” Mr Stankovic said.The Serbs say that the grave contains the bodies of Serbs who were killed when Bosnian Croat and Muslim troops took Mrkonjic Grad last autumn.The Muslim-Croat federation returned Mrkonjic Grad and nearby Sipovo to the Serbs under the Dayton agreement. According to US officials, Iran is maintaining “a significant presence” in Bosnia. “There are rogue elements, which could pose a threat to our forces, and this is why we want an end to the link,” said one, warning that the Iranian connection could derail the upcoming donor conference on the reconstruction of Bosnia.. Belgrade (AP) – A mass grave in northern Bosnia exhumed over the past two weeks contained 181 bodies, including those of women killed in their nightgowns, a Serb who took part in the exhumation was quoted as saying yesterday. With the tacit US approval, the LA Times said, the operation “grew into a large and well organized airlift operating through Turkey and Croatia, supplying thousands of tons of small arms, mortars, anti-tank-weapons and other light equipment”.The deliveries may moreover have had a crucial influence beyond Bosnia itself.

They said that the US would not protest – in diplomatic parlance that they had “no instructions” on the matter of Iranian arms shipments. President Clinton reportedly was “directly” involved.Thus deliveries began, continuing until January this year, after the implementation of the Dayton peace accords. And was there sympathy for Bosnia here? The answer is, yes.”According to the newspaper, quoting US sources, an arms supply route was mooted by President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia early in 1994, after previous shipments of Iranian arms to Bosnia had been blocked in September 1992 following strenuous objections from the Bush Administration.In early 1994, after the deal to set up a Muslim-Croat Bosnian federation, Mr Tudjman is said to have approached two senior US diplomats, Peter Galbraith, Ambassador to Croatia, and Charles Redman, then Washington’s special envoy to the Balkans. RUPERT CORNWELL

Washington
President Clinton tacitly approved large-scale shipments of Iranian arms to Bosnia from early 1994, despite the United Nations arms embargo, and in defiance of his administration’s own policy of isolating Iran as a fomentor of international terrorism and sworn enemy of the United States.The charges were set out yesterday in a long front-page article in the Los Angeles Times, detailing a scheme which even at the time was strongly suspected by US allies, including Britain and France. In a carefully worded reaction, the White House said the US had all along observed “the letter of the law and the requirements of the UN Security Council resolution.” But officials privately acknowledged that Washington was aware of the shipments “Were we in a position to stop them? Not really. They should vote.At Naqqoura, in Israel’s occupation zone, he was presented to a party of schoolchildren whose teacher embarked on a long speech of love for France. The President’s eyes swivelled with irritation towards his Foreign Minister, Herve de Charette who was forced to stand and watch this loquacious friend of France speaking for longer than the President had addressed his own troops.No wonder they seemed happier at the UN cocktail party afterwards, where Chirac’s Own helped him to chilled champagne in a garden above the Mediterranean Here, surely, was la mission civilisatrice Francaise..