Pulled up at the end of a rope, plastic bags caked with earth are beginning to surge from the bottom of a pit: at least a few dozen names will be removed from the list of the 20,000 missing since the war in Bosnia. Settling the problem of missing persons is essential if there is to be any hope for reconciliation, said US senator Bob Dole, put in charge by Washington to coordinate the efforts, in Sarajevo. The story told by the first corpses exhumed since Tuesday from the Paklenik pit, near Sokolac in eastern Bosnia, does not seem to necessarily support this reconciliation. The first bag opened by a forensic pathologist of the Muslim Commission for Missing Persons, contains bones, clothes and a sort of rusty wire bracelet.The victim's hands were tied behind, he says, confirming testimonies before the commission: Muslims from Visegrad and Rogatica were brought to Paklenik by Serb forces during an offensive in 1992
