SARAJEVO EXPECTS OF EU COMMISSIONER PATTEN TO GIVE GREEN LIGHT

SARAJEVO, Sept 18 (Hina) - The European Union commissioner for foreign affairs, Christopher Patten, will visit Bosnia- Herzegovina on Thursday and Friday and hold talks with Bosnian officials on the next steps Sarajevo should make in a bid to draw closer to the European integration processes. #L# The office of the European Commission for Bosnia on Wednesday said Patten would visit Sarajevo and Banja Luka and meet the international community's High Representative, Paddy Ashdown, the chairman of the Bosnian Council of Ministers, Dragan Mikerevic, and Foreign Minister Zlatko Lagumdzija. The Sarajevo media are expecting that during his tour to Bosnia, Patten will confirm that the country's authorities have finally met its commitments from the so-called road map - guidelines of the European Union - set three years ago. This is about 18 reforms aimed mostly at the strengthening of the state bodies and the adoption of necessary laws as a precondition for the further negotiations between Sarajevo and the EU. If Patten confirms that Bosnia has fulfilled this part of its duties, conditions will be created for the start of drawing up a feasibility study probably in the beginning of 2003, as the next step towards negotiations on a Stabilisation and Association Agreement between Bosnia and the Union. The EU office for Bosnia on Wednesday could not confirm such optimistic expectations of the local media. "Only Commissioner Patten will assess whether Bosnia has fulfilled the set guidelines, and currently we do not know what his assessment will be," the EU mission's spokesman in Sarajevo, Frane Maroevic, told Hina. The last report cited that Sarajevo fulfilled 11 conditions, and subsequently another two were met, so it is now difficult to asses whether everything expected has been done, the spokesman added. Maroevic believes that the elaboration of the feasibility study for Bosnia will take more time than, for instance, for Croatia. "In Croatia it was done relatively quickly, but owing to a complicated situation in Bosnia, it will take considerably more time," he said. A spokeswoman for the Bosnian ministerial council, Mirjana Micevska, said the homework was completely done by Sarajevo. "All the 18 conditions set by the European Union have been fulfilled, the Council's chairman Mikerevic has said that Bosnia has started meeting commitments it got upon its admission into the Council of Europe," Micevska told Hina. The obligations defined upon Bosnia's admission to the Council of Europe this year, contain the adoption of 91 laws, decrees and decisions from various fields in order that Sarajevo can adjust its legislature to the European standards. The Bosnian government - ministerial council - asserts that a half of the entire job has been done for less than six months. (hina) ms