RAVNO BALLOTS, FEARED MISSING, COUNTED IN SARAJEVO

ZAGREB, Sept 19 (Hina) - The local election commission in the southern Bosnian town of Ravno said on Thursday it had not received ballots from repeated elections held in Dubrovnik on September 14. The commission said that it had informed the OSCE mission in Sarajevo and the Croatian government's National Coordinating Commission for Bosnian elections about the problem. Six hundred forty-two refugees from Ravno staying in Dubrovnik could not vote on August 30 and 31 as other Bosnian refugees in Croatia because OSCE had mistakenly sent them ballots intended for the Serb entity. On September 15, the Ravno election commission received in the presence of an OSCE official ballots for cantonal assemblies of the Bosnian Federation, ballots from the Serb Republic, and ballots for some municipal governments, but not ballots from Ravno refugees, the commission said in a statement. The head of the Croatian National Coordinating Commission, Damir Zoric, on Wedneday sent a letter to the OSCE representative for Croatia, Tobias Wernle, demanding the case be investigated. Mauro de Lorenzo, assistant to the coordinator of the OSCE commission for the voting of Bosnian refugees, said on Thursday that the ballots indeed had not been delivered to the local election commission but had been counted in Sarajevo. "As I was personally at the polling station in Dubrovnik on Election Day, I can assure you that Mr Timothy M. Meisberger, an Officer at OSCE Sarajevo, took charge of the ballots directly following the close of the polling station on September 14, and returned to Sarajevo with them on 15 September in an OSCE van," de Lorenzo said in a letter to Zoric. De Lorenzo said that Meisberger had confirmed to him on Thursday morning that "all ballots arrived in Sarajevo with the sales unbroken, and that they have been counted." He said that Meisberger had explained the situation to the Ravno election commission and added there was no cause for any alarm. According to the Croatian National Coordinating Commission, OSCE election rules and regulations provide that absentee ballots should be counted at municipal counting centres, so it was not clear why this procedure was not followed in the case of Ravno. (hina) vm 191425 MET sep 96