CONTROVERSIAL P-2 FORM TO BE USED IN BOSNIAN MUNICIPAL VOTE

SARAJEVO, Dec 2 (Hina) - The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will set a date for municipal elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina after a two-day summit which opened in Portugal's capital Lisbon on Monday. OSCE mission spokesman John Verheyden said in Sarajevo that local elections may take place some time between April and July next year. Municipal elections should have been held in September this year, along with elections for other legislative and executive bodies, but had to be delayed after it had become evident that minimum conditions for freedom of movement were not met. One of the main reasons for the delay was the overt mishandling of voter registration in the Serb entity where tens of thousands of Serb refugees registered to vote in municipalities from which Moslems and Croats had been expelled during the war. The most drastic such cases were recorded in the strategic Brcko area of northeastern Bosnia, the eastern towns of Srebrenica and Zvornik and Banja Luka in the northwest. The election engineering was made possible by the use of Form P-2, which enables voters to register for the vote in a municipality where they wanted to live, instead of in a municipality where they had lived before the war. At the request of the Moslem side this autumn, OSCE mission chief Robert Frowick gave written assurances that Form P-2, which enables the legalization of results of ethnic cleansing, would no longer be used. This provoked an open anger on the Serb side which threatened that it would not allow an extension of the OSCE mandate. However, Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic had to give up such views after intensive international pressure. Her decision on the matter was announced on Sunday by Frowick, but at the same he said that the possibility of registering for elections by Form P-2 remained in force. Frowick tried to downplay the negative aspects of this decision, saying that the use of Form P-2 would be regulated by clearly defined rules. People applying for the vote by Form P-2 would have to prove their place of residence and each application would be decided upon by the electoral appeals subcommission. Verheyden said that this possibility was allowed under the Dayton peace agreement. (hina) vm jn 021632 MET dec 96