KARADZIC MAIN OBSTACLE TO BOSNIA'S JOINING PARTNERSHIP FOR PEACE - LOCHER

SARAJEVO, May 11 (Hina) - The absence of Bosnia-Herzegovina's full cooperation with the Hague war crimes tribunal is the main obstacle to the country's admission to NATO's Partnership for Peace programme, U.S. diplomat James Locher, who chairs a commission for the reorganisation of Bosnia's defence system, said on Tuesday.#L# Locher told reporters in Sarajevo the defence reforms, on which NATO insists to consider the possibility of Bosnia's joining the Partnership for Peace, would be carried out by the end of this month or at the start of June at the latest. He added, however, that the lack of cooperation with the Hague tribunal continued to represent a cause of great concern. Late last year former NATO Secretary-General George Robertson set 14 measures Bosnia has to undertake to become a Partnership for Peace member at the NATO summit in Istanbul next month. Thirteen of those measures refer to the establishment of new defence structures on the state level, full parliamentary control over the armed forces, and the reorganisation of the current entity armies. Locher said today Bosnia stood a good chance of meeting nearly all of those terms but that the fourteenth, which primarily refers to the arrest of the most wanted war criminals such as Radovan Karadzic, remained a hurdle to the recognition of the progress achieved in other areas. Bosnian Defence Minister Nikola Radovanovic confirmed that the state parliament today approved a proposal for the appointment of four senior officers to command posts in the newly established Joint General Staff and Operations Command of the armed forces, which paves the way for appointing said institutions. In the next few days the Croat-Muslim entity's defence ministry should nominate nine more senior officers, thus wrapping up the establishment of the most important military bodies at the state level, which Bosnia set up eight years after the war. (Hina) ha