OMBUDSMEN ACCUSE FEDERATION OF NOT IMPLEMENTING PROPERTY LAWS

( Editorial: --> 9231 ) SARAJEVO, July 22 (Hina) - Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (FBH) ombudsmen on Wednesday warned that property laws necessary for the return of refugees were not being implemented in the Croat-Muslim entity in a satisfactory way. The ombudsmen announced they would be seeking an extension of the deadline for applying the laws to March 1999. In April this year the FBH Parliament passed laws which guaranteed refugees the right of return to their private property and gave holders of tenancy rights an opportunity to return to the flats they fled from during the war. A small number of people have sought the return of their property, which is the result of the poor security situation, the non- existence of freedom of movement, insufficient economic revival and the poor state of the school system. Only a small number of those who sought their property received it back, ombudsman Esad Muhibic said at today's press conference in which the Federation ombudsmen presented their report on the implementation of property laws. In their report the ombudsmen point out how the bodies of authority which were supposed to implement the laws were incompetent and disorganised, but in many cases the problem was that municipal authorities were not functioning because the results of last year's elections had not been implemented. "In Drvar people do not have anyone to give their request to, let alone expect someone to resolve such a request," ombudsman Branka Raguz warned. Ombudsman Vera Jovanovic said for the entire past two years federal authorities had been against delivering a law on returning property, in fact rejecting implementing Annexe VII of the Dayton accord on the return of all refugees. "Their attitude has not changed even after the laws were passed," she said. The best example of this was the non-implementation of the Sarajevo Declaration on the return of 20,000 non-Muslims to the Bosnian capital by the end of the year, Jovanovic said. According to data gathered by the ombudsmen, some 7,500 people requested the return of their flats in Sarajevo while only about 600 received a positive response. The ombudsmen's office has data which shows that only 1,300 flats in Sarajevo house refugees from other parts of Bosnia, while another 5,000 flats house people who had flats in Sarajevo before the war. Muhibic warned that local authorities were refusing to hand over data on flats allocated to local and state officials. From the standpoint of a refugee, there is no difference between violence and state inefficiency, because both mean total lawlessness, Raguz said. (Hina) mbr jn /is 221837 MET jul 98