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EU Denies Mostar Vote Delayed, But Problems are Grave
By Mark Heinrich
ZAGREB, May 18 (Reuters) — The European Union administrator in Mostar on Saturday denied comments by an aide that May 31 elections to help reunify the Bosnian city were off, but the vote appeared awash in trouble. Hans Birchler, legal adviser to the EU mission in Mostar which remains split into Muslim and Croat sectors two years after the end of war, had told German radio earlier in the day that the vote had been postponed indefinitely.
Birchler said the vote, whose original date was reaffirmed by EU foreign ministers only days ago, was postponed because of technical difficulties but indicated that the Muslims' refusal to field candidates was the reason. Ricardo Perez Casado, the Spanish head of the mission, quickly repudiated Birchler's statement with one of his own.
"Following information published this morning concerning the elections in Mostar, the administrator and the EU mission declare that no decision has been taken (to postpone)," Casado said in a statement faxed to news agencies. "Negotiations between the parts (Croats, Muslims and other interested parties) are going on," he said without elaboration.
Frederika Seidel, a spokeswoman for Casado, told Reuterss Birchler had been expressing a personal view, not an EU
decision. But, pressed on whether the elections might be in jeopardy, she said: "Everything is up in the air." Mostar's elections were thrown into doubt earlier this month after political parties based on the city's Muslim east bank failed to register by the deadline. The Muslims are protesting at voting rules that they say disenfranchise non-Croats who fled or were evicted from homes in the Mostar area by Croat separatists during the war.
EU ministers re-examined the schedule but decided on May 13 that voting should proceed as planned, fearing a delay could jeopardise plans to hold elections throughout the federation- and Serb-controlled halves of Bosnia in September. Casado was empowered to delay the vote if he saw fit.
Officials in the Sarajevo office of Carl Bildt, the international High Representative to Bosnia who is overseeing political and economic reconstruction efforts, said on Saturday they would not be surprised if the vote was put on hold. "This (would be) the most sensible action to take," said
Duncan Bullivant, a spokesman for Bildt.
He said Muslim parties had pulled out of Mostar's EU-sponsored election committee altogether on Friday because
postponement was in their interest. "No point having elections unless all parties are agreed.' Birchler said in a German radio interview: "It (vote) is off. No new date has been set. It is just technically not possible to prepare the elections correctly before May 31.''
He said talks were continuing to try to persuade Muslim parties to register but quick agreement was unlikely. Asked if the "situation had run aground," Birchler said: "Correct."
Mostar, western Bosnia's biggest city straddling the main road to Sarajevo, was shattered in a 1993-94 Croat-Muslim war that was a sideshow to the main Serb-Muslim conflict. Fighting ended with east Mostar in the hands of Bosnia's Muslim-led government and the west run by Croat separatists. Unable to agree on power-sharing, the two sides assented to an EU mission tasked with gradually reunifying the city through joint police patrols, civilian free movement over inner-city truce lines, and eventual elections.
Mostar is regarded by Western officials struggling to reintegrate Bosnia under the 1995 Dayton peace accord as a test case of a Muslim-Croat federation that remains split into ethnic nationalist entities. Aside from a limited restoration of free movement, Mostar is still a tale of two cities — with two mayors, two currencies and different car number plates.
The Croats want to merge their part of Mostar and its Herzegovina hinterland with nearby Croatia whose nationalist government supported the Bosnian Croats' war. West Mostar is a fief of Croat paramilitary gangsters who ignore EU joint police patrols and run multimillion-dollar black-market rackets that thrive on ethnic division.
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