VOTER REGISTRATION RENEWED IN BRCKO

PALE, June 18 (Hina) - The process of voter registration was renewed in the Serb-held northern Bosnian town of Brcko on Wednesday and would last until July 12, OSCE mission spokesman David Foley told a news conference in Pale near Sarajevo. Foley said that four voter registration offices were opened in the Sava river town and that their number would soon be increased to ten. The registration process would be monitored by OSCE supervisors and experts who would decide in cases when persons wishing to register for voting do not have some of the documents required. The aim of the stepped-up supervision of the registration process is to prevent possible abuses such as those which had happened in the past, because of which the whole voter registration process in Brcko had been annulled. The registration of Bosnian citizens living abroad, who want to participate in municipal elections in mid-September, is over. According to final data gathered by OSCE, 340,000 eligible voters living outside Bosnia-Herzegovina have registered for the vote. Foley said that most of them opted for voting in municipalities where they had lived in 1991, including refugees currently staying in neighbouring Yugoslavia. Of 66,000 Bosnian refugees in Yugoslavia who registered for voting, 62,000 expressed a desire to vote in pre-war places of residence. (hina) vm jn 181755 MET jun 97