The Dutch government formally apologized Saturday to soldiers who were sent as U.N. peacekeepers to defend the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica with insufficient firepower and manpower to keep the peace.
The soldiers — veterans now — were overrun by more heavily armed Bosnian Serb forces led by Gen. Ratko Mladic who went on to massacre 8,000 Muslim men and boys in July 1995, in a bloodbath that an international war crimes tribunal labeled genocide.
