ZAGREB, Jan 4 (Hina) - The U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) suspended all relief aid to central Bosnia on Thursday after local Croats imposed a tax on its truck convoys, a UNHCR spokeswoman said.
ZAGREB, Jan 4 (Hina) - The U.N. High Commission for Refugees
(UNHCR) suspended all relief aid to central Bosnia on Thursday
after local Croats imposed a tax on its truck convoys, a UNHCR
spokeswoman said. #L#
"We have suspended all convoys to central Bosnia because
Bosnian Croat authorities in Mostar decided to impose a tax on
UNHCR of 50 kunas ($10) per truck," the spokeswoman said in Zagreb
Thursday.
She specified that the agriculture ministry in the Bosnian
Croat structure of Herzeg-Bosnia had decided to charge a certain
fee for sanitary inspection of each UNHCR-labelled truck.
The spokeswoman described the policy as totally unacceptable
obstruction of the freedom of movement.
"The UNHCR has never paid taxes to anyone in Bosnia," she
said, adding that the agency would send not one convoy to the
Federation's territory until the tax is rescinded and that the
Bosnian government in Sarajevo had been informed on the problem.
Two relief convoys were on their way from southern Croatian
town of Metkovic on Thursday morning, but both were halted and
suspended.
On December 29 the UNHCR officials in Sarajevo said that the
humanitarian air-lift, used to supply the relief to Sarajevo over
three and a half years of the Bosnian Serb siege, would cease to
operate as of this Thursday, when the last cargo aircraft was
scheduled to depart from the Italian Adriatic coast city of Ancona.
A spokesman for the UNHCR Sarajevo office had said that the agency
would continue to supply the relief to the city using the surface
routes.
(Hina) mm bk
041452 MET jan 96