A spokesman said UN Secretary General Kofi Annan "understands the anguish of the families of those who were killed" when Bosnian Serb forces pushed aside a lightly armed battalion of Dutch peacekeepers and overran the UN-designated safe area.

In Sarajevo earlier, an association of survivors said it would file a suit at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague against Annan and his predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

Annan was head of UN peacekeeping operations at the time of the massacre.

The spokesman, Fred Eckhard, said there were precedents for lawsuits against the UN but its officials had immunity for actions carried out in an official capacity.

"We don't want to say more on the legal aspects," Eckhard said. "We have only seen press reports."

On November 15, Annan released a report into the circumstances of the Srebrenica massacre that admitted that the "safe areas" policy was flawed and that the Security Council had failed to act decisively and forcefully.

The report emphasized that responsibility for the slaughter lay with the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and army commander Ratko Mladic, who have been indicted for war crimes by the international tribunal.