SARAJEVO, March 7: Bosnia’s top human rights court ordered Bosnian Serb authorities in a landmark ruling on Friday to pay four million marka (2.25 million dollars) to help Muslim families bury loved ones killed in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

The decision by the Human Rights Chamber followed demands for compensation filed by relatives of people believed to have been killed in what is seen as Europe’s worst atrocity since World War Two.

“This is an important milestone in the process of seeing justice done for the victims of Srebrenica,” top peace overseer Paddy Ashdown said in a statement.

The 49 family members had accused the authorities of not telling them the truth about what happened to their loved ones and of failing to fully look into the killings by separatist Serb forces.

The court ordered the authorities to release all information they have on the missing and to carry out a thorough investigation into the massacre by September.

It said the money would be given to a foundation set up by the Srebrenica survivors to erect a memorial centre near the eastern town and bury the dead there.

Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica in July 1995, declared a UN “safe area” two years earlier, and slaughtered up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys. Lightly-armed Dutch peacekeepers had been assigned to protect the enclave.

The compensation award was the first such ruling concerning Srebrenica.

In November, family members and survivors demanded compensation from the Dutch government and the United Nations for failing to protect them, but there has been no response yet.

There was no immediate reaction from the authorities in the Serb Republic, one of the country’s two autonomous entities.

Nearly 6,000 body bags with the remains of Srebrenica victims have been exhumed from dozens of mass graves in Bosnia but most remain unidentified and many are still missing.

Up to 600 identified victims will be buried in a common cemetery at the memorial centre near Srebrenica on March 31.

“It is positive that they must give money for the memorial centre,” Munira Subasic, who heads an association of Srebrenica mothers, said in reaction to the ruling. She lost 22 family members, including her husband and a son.

But she said justice would be done only when those behind the massacre were brought to justice.

The United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague in 1995 indicted wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic for their role in the massacre.

Both men remain at large, but Western envoys and NATO-led peacekeeping troops in Bosnia signalled renewed determination on Friday to find Karadzic, taking action against two wartime allies accused of helping him to stay free.

SERBIAN PRESIDENT: Veteran Montenegrin politician Svetozar Marovic was elected by parliament on Friday as the first president of Serbia and Montenegro, the newest European state which emerged last month from the remnants of Yugoslavia.

Marovic, a 48-year-old lawyer, is a member of the Democratic Socialist Party (DPS) of Montenegrin Prime Minister Milo Djukanovic. He was the sole candidate for the post.

Out of 112 deputies present at the session of the 126-seat parliament, 65 voted for Marovic, while 47 deputies — mostly from Serbian and Montenegrin opposition parties — were against his candidacy.

Marovic’s election marked the end of the term in office of Vojislav Kostunica, president of the previous Federal Republic of Yugoslavia who replaced hardline leader Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

The new president will preside over the Council of Ministers — responsible for defence, foreign affairs, finance, economic relations and human rights — and the Supreme Defence Council, the country’s highest military authority.

Marovic has five days to propose his cabinet, which must be approved by the assembly.

The parliament, which held its inaugural session on Monday, consists of 91 deputies from Serbia, with a population of some 10 million, and 35 from the much smaller Montenegro, with 650,000 people.

The power in the central parliament is shared between the DPS and Serbia’s ruling coalition, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia (DOS). Its deputies will serve a two-year term, to be followed by general elections in 2005.

UN PROSECUTOR: Chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte accused Serbian and Montenegrin authorities on Thursday of lacking the political will to hand over key suspects to her tribunal in The Hague.

Del Ponte said the Serbian authorities knew the whereabouts of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who she said was in Montenegro, and of wartime military chief Ratko Mladic, who she said was being sheltered by parts of the Yugoslav army.—Reuters