SARAJEVO'S SUBURB DOBRINJA GIVEN BACK TO CROAT-MUSLIM FEDERATION

SARAJEVO, April 24 (Hina) - An Irish judge, Diarmud Sheridan, has decided that the residential area called Dobrinja, which was a part of Sarajevo before the war, should be included into the Croat- Muslim Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina.#L# According to his decision, the precise boundary-line is established between the Bosnian Serb entity (the Republic of Srpska) and the Federation in this area and the last remaining open territorial issue of the inter-entity division has been solved. Judge Sheridan, whom the international community's High Representative to Bosnia, Wolfgang Petritsch, chose on 5 February as the independent arbiter for this matter, announced his decision in the Bosnian capital on Tuesday. The arbiter said the largest part of the contentious area in Dobrinja would belong to the Federation. He added that in the last two months he was acquainted with arguments of both parties and respected equally their requests. Sheridan admitted that the mistake had been made during the 1995 negotiations on the Dayton peace accords when the inter-entity line was defined on maps with the scale of 1:600,000. As a result, many illogical things and imprecise definitions occurred such as in Dobrinja where the boundary-line passed through blocks of flats or even through flats. Therefore it was Sheridan's duty to correct such absurdity. For the five years since the Dayton agreements was concluded, representatives of the two entities had not managed to settle this issue and this arbiter was called. The two sides are now obliged to respect his decision. The Irish judge assessed that the requests of the Croat-Muslim entity were better founded on facts. I could see that almost only people from the Federation were deprived of their flats owing to the Dayton solution and only what my conscience let me do was to compensate it in an adequate manner, Sheridan told reporters. Consequently, 650 flats will be given back to the Federation and 2,000-2,500 people will get back their homes. Sheridan's decision takes effect in the night between Tuesday and Wednesday when Bosnian federal police are to enter that suburb of Sarajevo. (hina) ms