"I don't understand how you can have all the bodies in the middle of this city without it being a health hazard," he said, explaining that ground water beneath many of the makeshift graveyards runs into the city's water supply. "A lot of these bodies were buried without coffins."

Dr. Samir Lukic, a physician with the Institute for the Public Health of Bosnia, said there can be problems when bodies are buried less than six feet deep, or carry infection. "It can also be a problem if burials are happening in populated areas or if there is more than one corpse in a hole, if there are too many people buried in a small area or if they are buried near water supplies," he said.

There is almost no space left in official cemeteries near the center of Sarajevo, and the large municipal graveyard on the outskirts of the city was left a shambles in the hurried departure of its Bosnian Serb caretakers in February.

"The Serbs took everything that wasn't nailed down, including the earth-moving equipment and the cemetery records," Major Harrington said of the Serb exodus that began as their neighborhoods came under the control of the Muslim-led Bosnian Government under terms of the Bosnia peace plan.

The Serbs also took with them the bodies of more than 350 Serbs who died during the civil war, most of them Bosnian Serb soldiers, leaving row upon row of four-foot-deep holes where the coffins had been.

The NATO peacekeeping force, known here as the Implementation Force, or IFOR, will not become involved in the exhumation of bodies or the reburials. "I don't think IFOR has any intention of getting into the burial business," said Major Harrington. Instead, he said, NATO is acting as a intermediary between the city government and international charity groups that might be able to offer money or equipment for the project.

"The Americans are our friends," said Vlado Raguz, a prominent Sarajevo funeral director who has been recruited by the city to oversee the reburials. "The American military has been a big help. They are taking this very seriously."