CROATIA TO PARTICIPATE IN RECONSTRUCTION OF MOSTAR'S OLD BRIDGE

MOSTAR, July 22 (Hina) - The Republic of Croatia has officially confirmed that it will participate in the reconstruction of Mostar's Old Bridge, the Mostar City Information Office said on Thursday. According to the Office, Croatian Foreign Minister Tonino Picula recently announced through the Bosnian Embassy in Zagreb that Croatia would join in the reconstruction of the Old Bridge. A special international donors' conference on the Old Bridge will be held in Mostar in late September or early October, the head of a body coordinating the reconstruction project, Rusmir Cisic, told Hina. Reconstruction works on the Old Bridge, to be completed in the first half of 2002, will cost US15.5 million, Cisic said. The World Bank has so far granted a four-million-dollar loan for this purpose, Italy has donated two million dollars, whereas Turkey and the Netherlands have given one million dollars each, Cisic said. By the end of this year, an Italian company from Florence should complete the project documentation and a company from Nuremberg should by the same time complete testings on all materials to be used in the reconstruction so that the restored version is as true as possible to the original, which was built 500 years ago, said a deputy head of the coordinating body, Tihomir Rozic. Rozic said the contractor would be selected through an international invitation for bids in early 2001, after which the reconstruction of the bridge over the Neretva River would start. Rozic and Cisic said the Old Bridge would be reconstructed under the auspices of UNESCO. Apart from the World Bank, the reconstruction will be financed also by the Aga Can foundation from Geneva and a US non-government organisation for the protection of monuments from New York. The Old Bridge was torn down during the Croat-Muslim conflict seven years ago. (hina) rml