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Final Agreement Reached on Mostar Elections Buses Will Allow Refugees and Displaced to Return to the Divded City to Vote By Kurt Schork SARAJEVO, May 25 (Reuters) - Muslim, Croat and Serb representatives averted disaster in the divided city of Mostar on Saturday by signing a final agreement with the city's EU administrator to hold local elections next month. A text of the agreement, faxed to Reuterss, calls for the poll not later than June 30th. Elections originally had been scheduled for the end of May but non-Croat parties in Mostar refused to register because refugees and displaced people driven from their homes during the 43-month Bosnian war would have been unable to vote. The agreement signed on Saturday called for buses to be made available to ensure that refugees and displaced people who want to vote in Mostar can make the trip. It also called for the European Union to designate one voting location in each country where the large majority of refugees from Mostar now live, provided those states agree. The countries were identified as Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland. Analysts said Saturday's agreement appeared to defuse an electoral row which had threatened the uneasy peace between Muslims and Croats in Mostar and cast a shadow over country-wide elections scheduled for September. The deal also strengthened Bosnia's troubled Muslim-Croat federation, which rules 51 per cent of the country. Civic leaders from both communities hailed the agreement as a breakthrough, despite reservations. "We signed an agreement today that will not be changed," said Mile Puljic, the Croatian deputy mayor of West Mostar. "Despite the fact that the agreement was reached between Sarajevo and Zageb without the participation of local authorities, we agreed to do it." The Muslim mayor of east Mostar, Safet Orucevic, was more enthusiastic: "I think that despite all the shortcomings of the agreement, these first elections will help create a democratic atmosphere," he said. "It will allow all Mostar citizens to elect their first joint city administration." Muslims and Croats fought as allies against separatist Serbs in the early days of the Bosnian war. That alliance soon crumbled and a three-way scramble for territory ensued. Nowhere was the fighting between Muslims and Croats more vicious than in Mostar during 1993 and early 1994. Bosnian Croats used superior firepower and secure supply lines to neighbouring Croatia to grab most of the west bank of the Neretva river as it flows through Mostar, bottling the Muslims up on the east bank. Tens of thousands of Muslims who lived on the west bank were "ethnically cleansed" from their homes and escaped abroad or were displaced elsewhere in Bosnia. Thousands more fled Muslim-controlled territory in the city to escape the war. Under the initial rules announced for the elections, only current residents of the city would have been allowed to vote, a decision which would have effectively ratified ethnic cleansing and the de facto partition of Mostar. Despite millions of dollars in reconstruction assistance and generous dollops of EU and U.S. diplomacy, Mostar remains a deeply divided city in which the scars of war have barely begun to heal. Muslims keen to return to homes on the west bank have been prevented from doing so, and even local buses running across the river travel virtually empty. Saturday's agreement caps days of intensive negotiations involving Mostar's EU administrator Ricard Perez Casado, the office of the High Representative to Bosnia Carl Bildt, local politicians and senior officials from Bosnia and Croatia.

Mostar, A Tale of Two Cities by Berserkistan's Jim Bartlett
For Peace in Mostar, Follow the Money Trail to Croatia

Berserkistan, May 23 · Mediators Head Off Muslim Boycott of Mostar Elections
Berserkistan, May 22 · Mostar Elections Focus of Casado-Izetbegovic Meet
Berserkistan, May 1 · Mostar to Hold Elections May 31
New Administrator Begins Tough Task of Making Mostar Functional
Mostar: Before and After its Devastation A site by Dubravko Kakarigi
Benvenuti in Guerra Gavino Paddeu chronicles Mostar's fall

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