SARAJEVO, Dec 4 (Hina) - Dayton Agreement provisions about the reintegration of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the right of all to return to their homes were not being fulfilled, UN and UNHCR representatives warned in Sarajevo on Wednesday.
Authorities in almost all parts of the country were doing nothing to protect the remaining members of ethnic minority groups, nor were they making efforts to create conditions for the return of refugees and displaced persons, they said.
UNHCR
SARAJEVO, Dec 4 (Hina) - Dayton Agreement provisions about the
reintegration of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the right of all to return
to their homes were not being fulfilled, UN and UNHCR
representatives warned in Sarajevo on Wednesday.
Authorities in almost all parts of the country were doing
nothing to protect the remaining members of ethnic minority groups,
nor were they making efforts to create conditions for the return of
refugees and displaced persons, they said. #L#
UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski said members of ethnic minority
groups had begun to return only to Sarajevo and Tuzla, one year
after the signing of the Dayton Agreement.
They were mostly Serbs which had spent the war in refuge in
the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Janowski said.
In other parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina, ethnic minorities'
groups have not begun to return.
UN High Commission for Refugees expressed special concern for
the continuation of exile, stressing as a drastic example the
situation in western (Croat-held) Mostar. Two more families had
been evicted from their homes in western Mostar on Monday and
Tuesday, increasing the number of exiled families in that part of
town to 69 this year, Janowski said.
UN spokesman Alexander Ivanko said that despite repeated
requests of the International Police, the local police had done
nothing to prevent such incidents.
Ivanko warned that evictions of certain groups of people from
their homes were not going on just in western Mostar.
Croats had been exiled from their homes in Vares (under Moslem
control) last week, he added.
UN representatives had protested about the incidents to the
local authorities and asked for their intervention, but their
protests had been left unanswered, Ivanko said.
Unconcealed ethnic cleansing was also continuing in the Serb
entity, Ivanko said, recalling most recent cases of exile of
Moslems near Bosanska Gradiska.
(hina) lm jn
041433 MET dec 96