Munira Subasic

The announcement on Friday of a ban on genocide and war crimes denial by High Representative Valentine Inzko, the international official who oversees implementation of the peace deal that ended the 1992-95 Bosnian war, was hailed by representatives of survivors of the Srebrenica gecocide.

The Netherlands Compensation Commission Potocari opened the doors of its Sarajevo office to potential compensation claimants on Tuesday and its website is also open for applications from relatives of people who were killed after being taken from Dutch UN peacekeeping troops' base in Potocari near Srebrenica in July 1995.

Denis Becirovic, the other lawmaker behind the proposal, said that because deputies from the main Bosnian Serb and Croat parties, the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, and the Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ, did not back the changes, it is now time for Inzko to step in and impose a solution.

Defence Minister Ank Bijleveld-Schouten told the Dutch parliament that relatives of a group of Srebrenica victims who were killed in July 1995 can submit requests for compensation from the start of March next year, after a Dutch court ruled that the state has partial responsibility for several hundred deaths.

Two Bosnian war victims' groups, the Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide and the Mothers of Srebrenica, held a small protest on Tuesday outside the Swedish embassy in Sarajevo to express anger about a letter from the Nobel Committee defending the award of this year's prestigious literature prize to Austrian author Peter Handke.

Members of the Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide and their supporters gathered on Tuesday in front of the Swedish embassy in Sarajevo to protest against the decision last month by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to award the Nobel Prize for literature to author Peter Handke, who took a pro-Serb stance during wartime.

"Mothers of Srebrenica" president Munira Subasic claims that the association has the right to sue Serbia and the Serb Republic (RS).

She pointed out that this right "definitely exists after the first-instance verdict against Ratko Mladic," Croatia's Vecernji List reported in its edition for Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH).

Subasic, however, did not further explain her claim.

A court in the Netherlands ruled Wednesday that the Dutch state was liable for the deaths of over 300 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the Srebrenica massacre, the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.