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Bosnia Conference Opens with Call for On-Time Elections
Carl Bildt says safeguarding the integrity of the
By Paul Holmes and Steve Pagani
The first session was opening at 1300 GMT, with a report from the major powers' chief envoy in Bosnia, Carl Bildt, on compliance by the former warring parties with the Dayton peace pact they struck under U.S. tutelage six months ago. Bildt has argued that to push back the election deadline set by Dayton because of imperfect conditions risks deepening divisions between Bosnian Serbs and Muslims and Croats.
Safeguarding the integrity of the polling system, secrecy of the vote and the ballot count were among the minimum requirements for a free and fair election, he said. "These are the absolute essential preconditions...I think they can (be met)," Bildt told a news conference. Any delay would increase the risk of partition into separate ethnic states, he said "The problem is we are going to have an election in a country where more than half the electorate have been displaced. We don't even know how many on the (electoral) list no longer exist," he said.
Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini, the conference chairman, told ministers that the future of Bosnia and the success of the Dayton pact depended on elections going ahead. "Elections are the crucial point of the peace process. Not holding them would be a big step backwards," Dini told a news conference. "Everything would be delayed with serious consequences."
Bosnia's Muslim-led government opposes holding the polls until suspects indicted by the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, in particular Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and army commander Ratko Mladic, are captured. "There is no credibility to talk of having elections while war criminals are allowed to roam free," Bosnia's U.N. ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey told Reuterss.
Bosnian Serb prime minister Gojko Klickovic told the conference the election should not be postponed. But he was quoted by the Bosnian Serb news agency SRNA as saying the polls would bring about the creation of a Serb national state. Bildt acknowledged that without complete freedom of expression and association, and in particular a more independent media, nationalist Muslim, Croat and Serb forces would be voted into power in the territories they controlled.
"The possibility of nationalist parties having the upper hand is very substantial irrespective of what we have been able to do," he said. "We cannot rig the election to produce what we would like to see."
Bildt, the international community's High Representative in Bosnia, said all sides were failing to implement fully the Dayton deal but mostly criticised the Bosnian Serbs for failing to bar Karadzic from office and hand him over for trial.
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FLORENCE, Italy, June 13 (Reuters) Backers of the deal that ended 43 months of bloodshed in Bosnia gathered in Florence, Italy on Thursday to review progress, with Washington and its allies determined to set a September date for post-war elections. The call came early in the conference.
BOSNIA’S ELECTIONS
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FLORENCE, ITALY
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