STARA GRADISKA-BOS. GRADISKA BRIDGE TO CLOSE DUE TO RENOVATION

STARA GRADISKA, March 13 (Hina) - The bridge across the Sava river between Stara Gradiska, Croatia, and Bosanska Gradiska, Bosnia- Herzegovina, is to be closed for traffic as of March 15 due to its reconstruction. This bridge which is also an international border crossing cannot be used until 10 September this year. The reconstruction will be carried out by a Croatian firm "Djuro Djakovic" which won the international tender, organised by the European Union. On February 10, the company's representatives and EU officials signed a contract on this job, in Sarajevo. A month later the company was notified that the contract had been put into effect. Before that, Croatian builders and representatives of the NATO-led Stabilisation Force in Bosnia (SFOR) agreed to closing the bridge for the traffic as of March 15. Hungarian SFOR engineering troops are to remove the current Maybi- Jonson construction which served as a temporary device for replacing a war-destroyed part of the bridge and prepare the building site. After that Djuro Djakovic workers will start repairing the bridge, a director of the company, Djuro Bjelobrk said recently. Croatian workers should supplement about 70 metre-long steel construction to the bridge. The value of the job is 2.27 million German marks. The entire international traffic across the Sava river must be soon directed via the bridges 'Zupanja-Orasje' and 'Gunja-Brcko', since the Slavonski Brod-Bosanski Brod bridge has also been closed due to the reconstruction and the bridge between Slavonski Samac and Bosanski Samac was destroyed in the war. (hina) ms