IFOR, INTERNATIONAL POLICE WORRIED ABOUT SITUATION IN MOSTAR

SARAJEVO, Dec 12 (Hina) - Officials of international police and IFOR, met on Thursday to consider measures which should be taken to calm the situation in Mostar. A spokesman for the United Nations in Sarajevo, Alexander Ivanko, said on Thursday that the International Police Commissioner, Peter Fitzgerald and an IFOR deputy chief commander, General Cordy Simpson, were discussing the Mostar crisis, caused by everyday evictions of people from their flats in western part of the town. Ivanko noted that international organizations were specially concerned at information that uniformed persons were involved in illegal evictions from western Mostar flats. There was evidence that the Bosnian Croat armed force (HVO) was directly implicated in one incident of such kind, the U.N. spokesman said and added that other cases were being investigated. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) also strongly condemned illegal expulsions in the western part of Mostar, and it was concerned over the fact that evictions had become rampant in the last two weeks, said a spokesman for the OSCE in Bosnia-Herzegovina, David Foley. According to figures available to UNHCR, in the western halve of Mostar, 71 cases of forced evictions have been recorded since the signing of the Dayton Agreement. UNHCR representatives believed that expulsions were being carried out only at the ethnic basis, as victims were always Bosniaks (Moslems) and Serbs, said a spokesman for the UNHCR, Kris Janowski. A representative of the Bildt office, Colum Murphy, on Thursday used strong words to describe the situation in Mostar. International community representatives, such as Martin Garrod and Michael Steiner, were fighting against the mafia in the area, but they had not still won the battle, Murphy added. Bildt's spokesman said that a part of the problem lied in the fact that Herzeg-Bosnia was still functioning. Herzeg-Bosnia had been officially dissolved, but, unfortunately, it still existed, Murphy said. (hina) jn mš 121821 MET dec 96