and when Haukland departed Bosnia on his vacation to Norway, they travelled on the same airplane. The 2002 report Srebrenica: a 'safe' area, did not assign any blame to Haukland for the massacre. Claims and retraction by retired NATO SACLANT In March 2010, John Sheehan, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic from 1994 to 1997, told a US Senate hearing that the Dutch had "declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialise their military – that includes the unionisation of their militaries, it includes open homosexuality", claiming that gay soldiers could result in events like Srebrenica. He claimed that his opinion was shared by the leadership of the Dutch armed forces, mentioning the name "Hankman Berman", who Sheehan added, had told him that the presence of gay soldiers at Srebrenica had sapped morale and contributed to the disaster. General van den Breemen denied having said such a thing and called Sheehan's comments "total nonsense", Sheehan's remarks were also dismissed by the Dutch authorities as, "disgraceful" and "unworthy of a soldier". Sheehan apologised to Dutch military officials on 29 March 2010, withdrawing his comments and blaming instead "the rules of engagement...developed by a political system with conflicting priorities and an ambivalent understanding of how to use the military." Criticism of the 1995 UN Special Representative for the former Yugoslavia In 2005, Professor Arne Johan Vetlesen said "Thorvald Stoltenberg's co-responsibility in Srebrenica boils down to that he through three years as a top broker contributed to create a climate—diplomatic, politic and indirectly militarily—such that Mladic calculated correctly when he figured that he could do exactly what he wanted with Srebrenica's Muslim population". The Dutch government report from 2002, Srebrenica: a 'safe' area, criticised the choice of Stoltenberg as a mediator. Denial Sceptisim about the massacre has ranged from challenging the judicial recognition of the killings as an act of genocide to the denial of a massacre having taken place. The finding of genocide by the ICJ and the ICTY, has been disputed on evidential and theoretical grounds. The number of the dead has been questioned as has the nature of their deaths. It has been alleged that considerably fewer than 8,000 were killed and/or that most of those killed died in battle rather than by execution. It has been claimed that the interpretation of "genocide" is refuted by the survival of the women and children. During the Bosnian war, Slobodan