POPLASEN'S ELECTION ISN'T CAUSE FOR OPTIMISM - SAYS U.S. ENVOY

( Editorial: --> 2778 ) SARAJEVO, Sept 24 (Hina) - The possible election of Serb Radical Party candidate Nikola Poplasen as President of the Bosnian Serb entity is not cause for much optimism, special United States envoy for the Balkans Robert Gelbard said in Sarajevo on Thursday. Gelbard said however that, as a whole, the recent general elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina had brought significant democratic changes. Poplasen's election is an exception, not a rule, Gelbard told reporters at the end of his week-long stay in BH, but added that everything Poplasen, the Serb Radical Party and its leader in Serbia, Vojislav Seselj, had done in the past did not make him an optimist. Seselj's neofascist Radical Party in 1991 formed its own squads of paramilitary volunteers, infamous for crimes they committed during the Serbian aggression on Croatia and BH. Nowadays Poplasen claims he advocates the implementation of the Dayton peace agreement, said Gelbard, but added he had learned during his mission to the Balkans that people make promises easily, but usually fail to keep them. The US envoy said rumours that Poplasen might allegedly offer the post of Bosnian Serb Premier to Momcilo Krajisnik, the current Serb member in BH's collective Presidency, were a bad joke, and that he believed Poplasen was wise enough not to do so. A considerable change in joint BH's bodies of authority will occur when Zivko Radisic, as one member of the leaders of the Sloga coalition, enters the BH Presidency, Gelbard said. We believe Krajisnik and his Serb Democratic Party have been the principal obstacles to the implementation of the peace agreement to date, the US envoy said. With Radisic we have for the first time the possibility to consolidate the bodies of authority of the state of BH, he concluded. (hina) ha jn/mbr 241742 MET sep 98