BOSNIA'S HDZ AND SDA PARTIES DISCUSS FUNCTIONING OF FEDERATION

MOSTAR, March 25 (Hina) - The two leading Bosnian Croat and Moslem political parties, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ B-H) and the Democratic Action Party (SDA), met behind closed doors in Sarajevo on Monday to discuss open issues in the functioning of the Bosnian Federation. It was agreed that the Western Herzegovina and Tomislavgrad cantons would hold constituent assemblies on March 26 while the two ethnically mixed cantons of Neretva and Central Bosnia would hold their assemblies on March 28. HDZ B-H president Bozo Rajic told a press conference after the meeting that all obstacles concerning the establishment of cantonal authority were removed. However, no agreement was reached on the distribution of leading posts in the Neretva and Central Bosnia cantons, he added. The meeting also solved problems related to the federal defence law by agreeing on how to manage the two components of the federal armed forces - the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) and the Bosnian Army. Rajic said that it was agreed that the personnel of institutions cooperating with the Hague-based war crimes tribunal should be "ethnically balanced." SDA vice president Edhem Bicakic said that the meeting also called for an end to a media war in the Federation. Rajic said that the Sarajevo canton had not been set up in accordance with the federal constitution and previous agreements. He said that the Agency for Information and Documentation (AID) had been established unconstitutionally to suppress the work of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. Both Rajic and Bicakic assessed that today's meeting created conditions for the unimpeded work of the federal government. (hina) vm 252200 MET mar 96