THE commitment to allow more, than 100,000 Bosnians to vote ink their "ethnically cleansed" pre war towns and villages is providing a major security problem for the election organisers, it emerged yesterday.
Meanwhile, the international high representative in Bosnia, Mr Carl Bildt, yesterday warned that the international community will not allow Bosnian Serbs to secede from Bosnia Herzegovina after the elections, as their leaders have been threatening in recent days.
Forty nine per cent of Bosnia Herzegovina is a Serb controlled entity, according to the Dayton peace agreement. But while having a local administration, it must remain part of the overall state of Bosnia Herzegovina.
The authorities in Republika Srpska, the Bosnian Serb entity, have said they will severely limit the number of road crossings, which refugees can use on polling day. They will impose other restrictions such as a requirement that all displaced persons travelling into Republika Srpska to vote next Saturday must travel in designated buses carrying eight or more people.
Over 40,000 Bosnians, mainly Muslims, have opted to travel across the boundary line between Bosnia's two entities to vote in their former areas which are now entirely Serb populated and deeply hostile to the exiles right to vote there. A further 60,000 will travel from Croatia, Serbia and elsewhere outside Bosnia.
The Organisation for Security and Co Operation in Europe (OSCE), which is supervising the election, and the international military force (Ifor) are expected to organise the returning voters in such a way as to keep them away from the most tense areas such as Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia. Instead polling stations will be established for the voters within their home regions but away from town centres.
Mr Bildt yesterday predicted "a massive traffic management planning problem" next Saturday. He told a press conference in Sarajevo that attempts being made by political tiers to control of the transportation voters would not be tolerated by the international community.
He said an international military force would be needed for a period after the mandate of Ifor expires at the end of 1996. Such force must be able to deter an one who contemplates any sort of military option in Bosnia Herzegovina in the next few years".
He said this issue had been discussed at the weekend meeting of European Foreign Ministers in Tralee, although the US "has not yet taken a position on this".
Decisions on the composition, strength and location of such a military force should be decided "by the competent bodies of the North Atlantic Alliance" when the election was over and the future clearer.
During the period after the election, power sharing between Bosnia's two entities (the Muslim Croat Federation and Republika Srpska) and its three communities (Muslim, Serb and Croat) would have to be established. No secession threats would be tolerated. If power sharing does not work then we are not going to have peace."