NEW BOSNIAN PASSPORTS PRESENTED IN SARAJEVO

( Editorial: --> 7348 ) SARAJEVO, 28 May (Hina) - Officials of the High Representative's Office, the Bosnia-Herzegovina Council of Ministers and the Bosnian Federation government presented in Sarajevo on Thursday the new BH passport. The passport has been designed in accordance with an agreement that Bosnia's three parties signed earlier this year. The new Bosnian passport has a dark blue cover with the name of BH written in large golden letters and that of one of the country's two entities in letters half that size. Citizens can chose between a passport displaying only the English word "passport" or one with the name of the document in either the Croatian, Serbian or Bosnian languages as well. BH Civil Affairs and Communications Minister Spasoje Albijanic announced that the new passports would be issued from July 1 and that the old passport, issued by the Republic of BH, would be valid until December 31 this year. The Council of Ministers has ordered two million passports from the German state print shop, Bundes Druckerei, at a cost of 9.4 million German marks. So far 50,000 passports have been printed. Bundes Druckerei general manager Ernst-Theodor Menke stated that the passports had been designed with the most sophisticated technology. In the new BH passport photographs will not be pasted but scanned and printed onto the document by a computer. Deputy High Representative Hanns Schumacher stressed that by providing for the issuing of new passports, the international community met its obligations in that sphere and that from now it would be within the competence of information systems at local administration bodies. Earlier, High Representative Carlos Westendorp's office recommended that the price of the new passport did not exceed DM40. On Thursday his deputy denied that the design of the new passport reinforced ethnic divisions between BH citizens. The passport came about as a result of a consistent implementation of the Dayton Accords and will not be a barrier between the people. If there is a problem, it does not lie with different designs of the new passport but in its underlying reasons, Schumacher said. (Hina) jn mro /mbr 282116 MET may 98