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Mostar Elections Postponed Until June in Deal to Avert Muslim Boycott
By Zoran Radosavljevic
Initial rules for the election convinced Bosnian Muslim leaders that kinfolk who had been expelled from the city by Croat separatists during a 1993-94 war would be unable to vote. "After many meetings we reached the basis for an agreement on Mostar elections. The first part of the agreement is to postpone the elections to the second half of June," EU administrator Ricardo Perez Casado said.
"It's an agreement on the basis of which all Mostar citizens registered in 1991 (before the war) will be able to
vote and do so in the best possible political conditions," he told a news conference in the Croat-Muslim city. Elections in Mostar are seen as crucial for the survival of Bosnia's fragile Croat-Muslim Federation, the cornerstone of the Bosnia peace treaty signed last December. The accord split the country into the federation and a Serb entity.
Casado said talks with both sides on the tricky mechanics of an election intended to help reintegrate Croat and Muslim-ruled sectors of Mostar would continue. "Local parties accepted the agreement in a favourable manner," he said, denying reports that it had to be crafted with presidents Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia and Franjo Tudjman of Croatia because local ethnic proteges were uncompromising.
Asked if Mostar Muslims now in Sweden, Norway, Germany and Switzerland would be able to vote, Casado said: "Yes, but don't forget one can vote in these countries even if one lives in other countries. I would like to propose to the EU to ensure maximum means of transport and financing. But we should always start from the fact it's the parties who organise (elections). It means we don't want to intervene, we want to help," he said.
Senior officials in Bosnia's Muslim-led central government in Sarajevo had said late on Thursday, amid feverish shuttle negotiations conducted by Casado, that a revised agreement on elections was expected. They said arrangements were being worked out either to transport refugees back to vote or to enable them to vote in the countries where they had taken shelter. Mostar's Muslim party candidates had protested at voting rules that they say would freeze out non-Croats who fled or were evicted from homes in the Mostar area during the war.
Mostar has been under EU administration since July 1994 while a peaceful reintegration of the former foes is sought. The current EU mandate expires in July. The Dayton peace treaty envisages freedom of movement but local nationalist leaders, especially on the Croat side, still try hard to prevent ethnic mixing across what were meant to be merely administrative and porous boundaries.
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MOSTAR, Bosnia, May 24 (Reuters) — The European Union administrator of Mostar said on Friday elections to help reunify the ethnically polarised city, originally set for May 31, would be postponed until the second half of June. He confirmed the gist of a report given on Thursday by a senior European diplomat who said mediators had struck a deal to head off a Muslim boycott that threatened the first postwar vote in western Bosnia's biggest city.
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