Two former Bosnian Serb army commanders were convicted and sentenced to lengthy prison terms today for their roles in the 1995 massacre of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in the UN "safe haven" of Srebrenica.

Colonel Vidoje Blagojevic, 54, a wartime commander of the Bratunac brigade which took part in the massacre of men from the east Bosnian enclave, was sentenced to 18 years for complicity in genocide and other war crimes.

Dragan Jokic, 47, a major in the Zvornik brigade who assumed command during a week of killing at the end of the 1992-1995 war, received a nine-year sentence. He was convicted of murder, extermination and persecution on racial grounds.

Prosecutors had sought 15-20 years in prison for Jokic and 32 years for Blagojevic. But both men were acquitted of allegations of command responsibility, and the court said they had merely passed on orders, rather than given them.

The sentences were criticised by some analysts as relatively light when compared to 17-year and 27-year sentences handed down to two lower-ranking officers who pleaded guilty and testified against Blagojevic and Jokic, their former superiors.

The Srebrenica massacres were committed in July 1995, towards the end of the Bosnian war after the eastern Bosnian enclave, which had been under the protection of Dutch United Nations peackeepers, fell to Serb forces. Some 30,000 women, children and elderly people were packed into buses and deported. The men were separated and executed. Their bodies were dumped in mass graves.

The presiding judge at the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague, Liu Daqun of China, said neither Blagojevic nor Jokic were "major participants in the commission of the crimes." Rather, they provided logistical support by supplying heavy machinery to dig graves and security for the convoys of detainees.

"It has not been established that [Blagojevic] had knowledge of the executions when he rendered the assistance," the ruling said.

In Srebrenica, the ruling was met with criticism from both Muslims and Bosnian Serbs. Dragan Petrovic, 28, a Bosnian Serb, questioned the fairness of the tribunal. "Most of the people arrested and sentenced there are Serbs," he said.

Azem Mujic, a 61-year-old Muslim returnee to Srebrenica whose son and brother were killed in the massacre said that "for some these verdicts are too mild but for me they can never be harsh enough."

The highest ranking official to be convicted at the UN tribunal for killings and deportations at Srebrenica is General Radislav Krstic, who is serving a 35-year prison term.

Also being tried for the Srebrenica massacre, and 65 other counts of war crimes, is Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav president whose trial resumed last Tuesday after a three-week recess.

The two most wanted suspects in the Srebrenica indictment, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and General Ratko Mladic, remain at large.

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