SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY CAN'T ENDORSE SPECIAL RELATIONS AGREEMENT

SARAJEVO, Nov 16 (Hina) - The Social Democratic Party (SDP) in the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina's Parliament cannot support the agreement on special relations with Croatia in its initialled form, SDP spokesman Svetozar Pudaric told Hina in Sarajevo on Monday. Pudaric confirmed that SDP MPs on Saturday met with the Federation President Ejup Ganic to discuss the agreement on special relations with Croatia and decided that the SDP could not endorse the document in the form in which it had been proposed. With 19 mandates in the Federation Parliament, the SDP is the third strongest party after a Social Democratic Action (SDA)-led coalition with 68 seats and the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia-Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) with 28 seats. "We propose that the agreement on special parallel relations with Croatia be signed urgently but not in this form", Pudaric said adding his party believed that the BH Federation and Croatia had to improve their relations on the basis of equality. At a session held at the end of last week, the SDP council for political and legal relations concluded that the way negotiations on the special relations agreement had been conducted and completed was detrimental to Bosnia-Herzegovina. "The HDZ and SDA had understood this as an inter-party issue" and only afterwards asked for confirmation from those institutions which should have conducted the negotiations in the first place, Pudaric concluded. (hina) rml/ab