Farewell For Victims Of Crash Day Of Mourning In Bosnia For 12 Peace Officials On Copter
Family members and foreign diplomats packed a cathedral Saturday in an emotional memorial service for 12 international officials killed in a helicopter crash in central Bosnia last week.
The bells of Sarajevo’s Sacred Heart Catholic Cathedral chimed as Bosnian government representatives, foreign officials and family members of the dead filed past parallel lines of blue-uniformed members of U.N. police monitors into the church.
The governments of Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb republic declared Saturday a day of mourning.
“We hope today that the deaths of these 12 people will not be in vain,” said German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel, who was among those paying his respects. “This country needs real reconciliation and trust.”
Kinkel arrived in the Bosnian capital Saturday morning with relatives of the five German victims of Wednesday’s crash. Gerd Wagner, a German career diplomat who was deputy to the top peace envoy in Bosnia, Carlos Westendorp, was among those killed when the U.N. helicopter he and 15 others were riding in crashed into a fog-covered mountain in central Bosnia. Eleven other officials died. The helicopter’s four Ukranian crewmen survived.
Five Americans, a Briton and a Pole were among those killed. It was the worst accident for international officials trying to bring peace to the Balkans since a plane carrying U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown crashed into a mountain near Dubrovnik, Croatia, in April 1996. Brown and the 34 other people on board were killed.
The leaders of Bosnia’s four main denominations - Catholic, Orthodox, Muslim and Jewish - took part in the ceremony, as well as U.S. and British prelates. Several languages mingled as the congregants read prayers and sang psalms.
Outside, hundreds of Bosnians stood in a light, chilling drizzle, looking toward the cathedral’s facade - the rosette still gaping after being shattered in Bosnia’s 3-1/2-year war. Many wept.
Westendorp paid tribute to his five staff members one by one, mourning the loss of “some of the best members of our team.”
The U.S. special envoy to Bosnia, Robert Gelbard, urged the families to “find some comfort in the certainty that your beloved children, husbands, fathers and brothers were in very real ways bringing justice and hope to the people of Bosnia.”
U.N. envoy Kai Eide appealed to the colleagues and families of the deceased to continue their work, saying “their footprints are all over Bosnia-Herzegovina.”
“We must find their footprints and continue in the same path,” he said.
As the service concluded, a single bagpiper walked around the square outside the cathedral, past saluting U.N. police and Bosnians with faces streaked with tears.