JELAVIC DENIES RESPONSIBILITY FOR CALLS FOR THIRD BH ENTITY

ZAGREB, Feb 23 (Hina) - The Croat member of the collective Presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ante Jelavic, on Tuesday said he could not be held responsible for calls for establishing a third entity in the country. Jelavic said this in his reply to US Ambassador Richard Kauzlarich, who had called on Jelavic to distance himself from some news articles, as well as from a poster-sticking campaign and increasingly loud claims of the Croat side calling for the forming of the third BH entity. In his reply, Jelavic said that he had no authority over any paper's editing policy, adding it would be too much to ask of him to distance himself from views presented in every newspaper article. "It is inappropriate to ask from me an answer about the reasons for the occurrence of what you call 'an orchestrated campaign for the circulation of petitions calling for a third entity' or 'inflammatory machinations'; it is equally inappropriate to ask me to distance myself from 'counterproductive calls for the third entity", Jelavic said. Jelavic said that as far as he knew, the calls Kauzlarich described in his letter had not been made by any Bosnian Croat representative, therefore any restrictive action would be completely unnecessary, or rather it would be understood as the limitation of freedom of the media, expression and public activity. Jelavic reiterated his support for the implementation of the Dayton agreement. (hina) mm rml