FEDERAL INTERIOR MINISTRY DOESN'T EXIST IN PRACTICE - IVANKO

( Editorial: --> 5895 ) SARAJEVO, Dec 4 (Hina) - The UN mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the International Police Task Force (IPTF) command have clearly asked that the 'Agency for Inquiry and Documentation' (AID) must be reorganised and become a part of the (Croat-Moslem) Federation's interior ministry, UN spokesman Alexander Ivanko said on Thursday. Moslem and Croat officials must reach agreement by themselves on the way to replace the AID, but it must be a part of a re-organised federal interior ministry and not an external organisation directed by party's channels instead by the government, Ivanko added. The AID is in fact a secret service that is not under the control of legal authorities, and international representatives maintain that the (Moslem-led) Party of Democratic Action (SDA) controls it. The President of Bosnia-Herzegovina's collective presidency, Aslija Izetbegovic, has recently said that he would not allow the cancellation of the AID. "We shall not be dispossessed of this service, which, after all, controls who is coming into the city (Sarajevo), where people are moving and who is doing what. It is necessary in the situation when the borders are porous," Izetbegovic said in the end of last week in Sarajevo. The UN spokesman said that the IPTF had received many verbal persuasions about the readiness to reorganise the interior ministry and the AID, but little has been done in practice so far. We are certainly expecting that the issue of the AID will be solved through the establishment of the new federal interior ministry, but this process has not began yet. What we have at the federal level are the interior minister and his deputy. We are trying to speed it up, but the truth is that we are always hitting the wall, Ivanko added. (hina) jn mš 041453 MET dec 97