OSCE ENDS TECHNICAL PREPARATIONS FOR BOSNIAN ELECTIONS

( Editorial: --> 9279 ) SARAJEVO, Sept 9 (Hina) - The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina on Wednesday opened a vote counting centre in Sarajevo, which will collect ballot papers from polling places abroad including those in Croatia and Yugoslavia for this weekend's general elections. The OSCE's deputy mission head for organising the September 12 and 13 poll, Linda Edgeworth, opened the centre in the Sarajevo suburb of Lukavica. SFOR troops will secure the centre which will deliver all voting papers for Bosnian citizens to fill in abroad, and will also count votes in the elections to representatives bodies in the Bosnian Serb entity. Papers for electing authoritative bodies in the Muslim-Croat Federation will be delivered to and counted at another centre in Rajlovac, also near Sarajevo. Edgeworth said representatives of the OSCE and political parties taking part in the elections would supervise the entire course of voting and counting ballot papers. Vote counting would be done twice by commissions - first by hand and then by computer, because ballot papers this time have been printed so that they can be scanned. If the results are different, counting will be re-done. The counting of votes at polling places in Bosnia would be done as soon as they were closed on Sunday at 4pm. On the first day of the elections, this Saturday, polling stations would be open from 7am to 7pm. According to earlier announcement, preliminary results for the two-day general elections in Bosnia will not be known very quickly and it is expected there could be a wait of at least 10 days before they are known, while the final and official results should be known by the beginning of October. Bosnian citizens with the right to vote this year have a choice of 83 registered political parties and various independent candidates, who will battle for places in six different levels of authority - the three-member Bosnian Presidency, the president and vice- president of the Bosnian Serb republic, the Bosnian Parliament, the Bosnian Serb parliament, the Bosnian Federation parliament and the 10 cantonal assemblies within the Muslim-Croat Federation. This year elections for local bodies of authority will be held for the first time in 11 newly-established municipalities, which were created out of former municipalities which remained divided along the inter-entity boundary line following the signing of the Dayton accords at the end of 1995. This year's elections in Bosnia are organised by the OSCE mission to BH at a cost of $30 million. (Hina) mbr /ha 091931 MET sep 98