By Patrick Worsnip UNITED NATIONS, June 8 (Reuters) - The United Nations has received documents in a suit families of a 1995 massacre in Bosnia want to bring against it over its failure to prevent the bloodshed, but is immune from legal action, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Friday. The world body has drawn lessons from the Srebrenica massacre, in which Bosnian Serb forces killed at least 8,000 Muslim men and boys that Dutch U.N. peacekeeping troops had been charged with protecting, said spokeswoman Marie Okabe. Relatives of the victims sued the Dutch state and the United Nations in the Netherlands on Monday. Lawyers said the Dutch had refused crucial air support to their troops defending the town, and the U.N. had not tried to make them provide it. Survivors of the massacre during Bosnia's 1992-95 war were "absolutely right" to demand justice for what has been called Europe's worst atrocity since World War II, Okabe said. She did not directly address any U.N. responsibility, but said the United Nations should not rest "until it is fully equipped to prevent such tragedies from recurring in future within its peacekeepers' midst". "I just received word that the United Nations has received the legal documents relating to the case," Okabe told a questioner at a regular news briefing. But she said the U.N. was protected by a Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations adopted by its General Assembly in 1946. The convention states: "The United Nations, its property and assets wherever located and by whomsoever held, shall enjoy immunity from every form of legal process except insofar as in any particular case it has expressly waived its immunity." But this immunity, Okabe said, "in no way diminishes the U.N.'s commitment to assist the people of Srebrenica in the aftermath of this tragedy." "I don't know what the next step is in terms of logistics," she added. During the war, Srebrenica was declared a safe area and guarded by a Dutch army unit, which was part of a larger U.N. force in Bosnia. The lightly armed Dutch soldiers, lacking air support and under fire, were forced to abandon the enclave to Bosnian Serb forces, who took away and massacred Muslim males. The Dutch government has not commented on the suit, but lawyers said past attempts by the families to seek compensation from it had been rejected as the government denied liability. Okabe said a 1999 report by former U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan had "highlighted in very frank terms the action that needed to be taken by the U.N. ... to avoid a repeat of those tragic events". The U.N. was doing everything in its power to bring those responsible to justice and to assist in the recovery of Srebrenica, she said.
