BRCKO LEADERS PUT FAITH IN BIG BUREAUCRACY TO KEEP PEACE

( Editorial: --> 7360 ) BRCKO, July 13 (Hina) - Local leaders in Brcko have been forced to chose a huge municipal bureaucracy of 154 workers as their answer to international demands that the north-eastern Bosnian town have a multi-ethnic administration. The international supervisor for Brcko has ordered that employees in the town administration should be 52 per cent Serb and 48 per cent Croat and Bosniak (Muslim). However, in order to avoid sacking a large number of Serbs currently working in the administration, Brcko's municipal executive committee has decided to increase the total number of employees. Before the war 80 per cent of Brcko's population was non-Serb. Because of the town's strategic importance, the Yugoslav People's Army and Bosnian Serb forces seized Brcko at the start of the conflict in 1992. The Dayton peace agreement did not satisfy Bosniak and Croat demands that the town be returned to them, but instead left open the question of control to a later date. Until then, decisions in Brcko are arbitrated by international supervisor Robert William Farrand. Brcko's municipal executive committee has decided that only 22 Serb workers will be dismissed, while another 28 Serb workers who should have been discharged will remain in their positions, the town's Croat deputy mayor Ivan Krndelj said after the meeting. "A total of 154 people will be employed in the municipal administration and this is an enormous administrative machinery, but to keep peace in the house this was the only possibility," he said. (Hina) mbr jn /rml 131718 MET jul 98