The former United States Senator, Bob Dole, who chairs the International Commission on Missing Persons, has urged Serbs, Croats and Muslims in Bosnia-Hercegovina to work together more closely on the issue.

Mr Dole was speaking during a visit to Sarajevo to monitor progress on determining the fate of people who disappeared during the war in Bosnia.

The International Red Cross says at least eighteen-thousand people are still missing, and that in the three years since the war it has resolved just two-thousand cases.

International officials say the former warring parties need to share more information, particularly on the sites of mass graves.

Mr Dole had been due to go to northern Bosnia to visit centres carrying out forensic tests on bodies exhumed from such graves, but bad weather prevented the trip.