OSCE REPORTS EXPLOSION IN BANJA LUKA

SARAJEVO, July 15 (Hina) - An explosive device went off early Tuesday morning outside an apartment building in the Serb-held northwestern Bosnian town of Banja Luka in which a senior OSCE official was residing. OSCE mission spokesman David Foley told a news conference in Sarajevo that the explosion had occurred at 1.45 hours, shattering a large number of windows on the building. So far there has been no evidence that our official was the target of the attack, Foley said. The bomb attack occurred two days after an OSCE-marked vehicle had been blown up in the eastern town of Zvornik. There have been cases of verbal intimidation of OSCE officials since the beginning of the current political crisis in the Serb entity of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but those threats did not have serious consequences, he added. Foley said that the threats were not connected with the recent arrest by SFOR troops of war crimes suspects in the northwestern town of Prijedor. UN spokesman Alexander Ivanko said that Serb police in Banja Luka had reacted promptly, conducting an on-site investigation after the blast. The results of the investigation have not been released yet. (hina) vm 151409 MET jul 97