THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) – Two generals from opposite sides of the Bosnian war, a Muslim and a Serb, surrendered to the U.N. war crimes tribunal Monday to answer charges they were responsible for atrocities during the brutal 1992-95 conflict.

Gen. Rasim Delic, 56, the former commander of the Muslim-dominated Bosnian army, was in charge of foreign Islamic volunteers who allegedly murdered, beheaded, tortured and raped Bosnian Croat civilian prisoners.

Hours after Delic surrendered, Gen. Radivoj Miletic turned himself in to tribunal authorities for trial on charges related to the deaths of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim civilians in July 1995 at Srebrenica, in the worst civilian massacre in Europe since World War II.

They joined more than 50 other suspects at the detention unit outside The Hague, including former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Miletic, a former deputy chief-of-staff in the Bosnian Serb army, was indicted with two other Bosnian Serb generals, Milan Gvero and Zdravko Tolimir. Gvero surrendered last week, and the Serbian government is negotiating Tolimir’s surrender.

Delic is accused of four counts of war crimes, including the alleged murder, cruel treatment and rape of Bosnian Serb and Croat prisoners, committed by the foreign volunteers, or mujahadeen.

Volunteers from the Arab and Muslim countries arrived in Bosnia in 1992 while the overpowered Muslim-dominated army was fighting separate conflicts with Yugoslav-backed Bosnian Serbs and a Bosnian Croat militia supported by Croatia.

By the end of the year, the volunteers were integrated into the army, and in the autumn of 1993 Delic assembled many of them into a unit called “El Mujahed.” In June 1993, Islamic fighters allegedly gunned down a group of Croat prisoners, killing 24.

In September 1995, the unit captured dozens of Serb soldiers and civilians, including three women. All of the estimated 60 soldiers are missing and presumed dead, the indictment said, and the women were abused and raped.

Before boarding the plane, Delic thanked a crowd of about 300 former Bosnian soldiers who had come to support him.

Miletic, Gvero and Tolimir were close aides to wartime Bosnian Serb commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, a top war-crimes fugitive. They are charged with the expulsion and murder of Muslims during Bosnian Serb onslaught on Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia.

Their indictment says Gvero, Miletic and Tolimir belonged to “a joint criminal enterprise” that included Mladic and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, the most wanted fugitive of the court.

Serbia faces immense Western pressure to hand over about a dozen suspects wanted by the tribunal court, particularly Mladic, who is charged with genocide against the Muslims in Srebrenica. Karadzic is believed hiding in Bosnia.

The United States has suspended financial and political aid to the Serbian government to press for the extradition, while European Union officials warned that Serbia would not be able to establish closer ties with the bloc unless the suspects face justice. Earlier in February, the government persuaded Serbian army commander Gen. Vladimir Lazarevic to surrender and face allegations of war crimes in Kosovo in 1999.

The war in Bosnia, like the earlier war in Croatia, began after the country declared independence from Yugoslavia and the country’s Serb minority rebelled.

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Associated Press writers Aida Cerkez-Robinson in Sarajevo and Dusan Stojanovic in Belgrade contributed to this report.

AP-ES-02-28-05 1222EST

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