SECOND DAY OF BALLOTING IN BOSNIA ELECTIONS GOING ON WELL

SARAJEVO, Sept 14 (Hina) - The second day of the balloting in Bosnia local elections is going with no serious difficulty, a spokesman for the OSCE, has said. Polling stations have opened in all municipalities, except Zepce, since Sunday morning. Two voting station in Usora (central Bosnia), closed on Saturday, were open from the morning, and eight out of 11 stations were open in Zepce, the spokesman, David Foley said on Sunday. He did not cite reasons for the blockade of elections in that central Bosnian town, but said that everything was being done to remove the problem. According to first estimates of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, on Saturday the turnout of voters was almost 50 percent, and OSCE officials described this as a great success regarding the fact that the voting has been lasting two days. Foley said that a heavier turnout of people was expected on Sunday at the polls in eastern Mostar. He said that only one serious incident took place in Mostar overnight when a group of drunk young Croats attacked two policemen, one of whom was a Croat and the other a Moslem (Bosniak). Assailants began to abuse the Moslem policeman and his Croat colleague tried to protect him, then both were beaten and were taken to hospital, the OSCE spokesman said. He stressed that the incident was only indirectly linked with the elections, as the attacked policemen guarded a building where OSCE supervisors were controlling ballot boxes. According to Foley, OSCE officials have taken additional measures to correct irregularities that were the result of a Bosnian Serb attempt to manipulate election results at one polling stations in Brcko, the north-eastern Bosnian town currently under international supervision. That station was closed temporarily on Saturday as voters were given wrong ballot material. Therefore, the voting will have to be repeated at that polling station on Sunday. Foley said that additional measures were also taken in the western town of Drvar aimed at enabling the completion of the entire electoral procedure where local electoral commissions slowed down the balloting. He added that it was also established that some of Serbs coming to Drvar to vote possessed insufficient identification papers. Some of them had only documents written in pencil without photographs. The OSCE opened one more voting station in the town to speed up the balloting. The OSCE spokesman said that 89 percent of registered voters decided to elect authorities of municipalities where they had lived before the war. Such decision has been made by 96 percent of eligible voters in the Croat-Moslem Federation and by the 80 percent of voters in the Bosnian Serb entity. (hina) mš 141411 MET sep 97