MOSTAR, July 8 (Hina) - International Police Task force (IPTF) Commander for Mostar, Berthold Hubegger described as irrational Monday's conduct of Bosnian Croat officials in the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, who had refused to sign an
amendment to the agreement on the establishment of a joint police force in the canton.
RRATIONAL
MOSTAR, July 8 (Hina) - International Police Task force (IPTF) Commander
for Mostar, Berthold Hubegger described as irrational Monday's conduct
of Bosnian Croat officials in the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, who had
refused to sign an amendment to the agreement on the establishment of a
joint police force in the canton. #L#
At Tuesday's news conference in Mostar, Hubegger recalled three
principles of the amendment, which, he said, the IPTF had set as
conditions for the signing of the agreement.
The first principle is that the total number of authorised police
officers in the canton's interior ministry amounts to one in 250
residents of the county. The second principle stipulates that the ethnic
structure of the police force would reflect the ethnic structure of the
residents of the canton from the 1991 census and would be consistent to
the Bonn-Petersburg Agreement dated 24 April 1996.
The third principle is that the agreement be fully implemented by
15 September this year.
Hubegger recalled that the highest officials of the Bosnian
Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) had agreed at a meeting in Mostar last
Saturday that the Bonn-Petersburg Agreement be fully implemented.
According to him, there was nothing new in the amendment that had
not been included in the Bonn-Petersburg Agreement.
Asked why the IPTF had suggested the amendment if that was the
case, Hubegger said that Bosnian Croat authorities had refused to sign
three items, three principles which the IPTF had set as conditions.
Spokesman of the Mostar's regional office of the international high
representative for Bosnia, Dragan Gasic, said that on calling a group
session of three municipal councils which had joined into the Union of
Croat Municipalities, the municipal councils had not respected the
transitional statute of the town of Mostar, adding that none of the
Bosniac representatives had been present at the meeting.
Gasic held this was a meeting of three clubs of Croat
representatives, not a session of three municipal councils, so the
decisions reached by the municipal councils were "not valid".
(hina) lm
082015 MET jul 97