OSCE delays decision on refugee voting .
Kurt Schork
SARAJEVO 1996-08-26
Bosnia 's election organisers will decide on Tuesday whether or not to postpone municipal elections scheduled as part of nationwide balloting , an OSCE spokeswoman said on Monday .
Officials from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe ( OSCE ) are considering the postponement following allegations of serious irregularities in the registration of Serb refugees .
International observers say the alleged irregularities could affect the outcome of voting for municipal assemblies .
" Tomorrow ...
the Provisional Election Commission will consider the possible postponement of municipal elections only ...
the other elections will be held on September 14 , " OSCE spokeswoman Agota Kuperman told reporters in Sarajevo .
" I think that it would be very difficult to select which municipal elections would have to be cancelled .
I think probably if the decision ( to cancell ) were to be taken it would probably be all municipal elections ..
. "
Kuperman added that options other than postponement were also on the table , but she refused to specify what they were .
The Dayton peace agreement gave the OSCE a mandate to organise Bosnian elections .
The Provisional Election Commission is OSCE 's top rule-making body for the poll .
More than 600,000 refugees have registered to vote in 55 countries around the world , representing about 20 per cent of Bosnia 's total electorate .
They are due to begin voting on Wednesday , August 28 , just one day after the PEC is supposed to make its decision .
Balloting inside Bosnia is scheduled for September 14 , when citizens are slated to elect municipal and cantonal assemblies , separate Moslem-Croat and Serb parliaments , a national House of Representatives and a three-man Presidency .
A Sarajevo daily newspaper , Dnevi Avaz , which is close to Bosnia 's Moslem nationalist SDA party , on Monday said the OSCE would postpone the municipal-level elections until the Spring of 1997 because of the refugee registration problems .
SDA has a representative on the Provisional Election Commission .
" I do n't know what the source of the Dnevi Avaz report is , but it is consistent with what I have heard from western diplomats and from inside the OSCE , " said an OSCE staff member in Sarajevo who asked not to be named .
" The word is that Frowick has decided to postpone municipal elections but that he will wait for one more session of the PEC on Tuesday to take everyone 's temperature on the issue . "
Ambassador Robert Frowick , an American , heads the OSCE mission in Bosnia .
OSCE and independent monitors allege that Serb authorities have systematically discouraged refugees from registering to cast a ballot in the places they lived before the war .
Instead , the refugees were said to have been directed by their authorities to vote from strategic towns which had Moslem majorities before the 43-month Bosnian war , but which are now underpopulated as a result of " ethnic cleansing " .
Diplomats explain the purpose of this electoral engineering is to secure Serb control over pivotal towns inside the 49 per cent of Bosnia known as the Serb republic , consolidating through the ballot box what was initially taken in war .
The top U.N. refugee official in the Balkans highlighted the voter registration problem on Monday .
" Results of the registration for September elections herald a dismal future for multi-ethnicity in Bosia-Hercegovina , " warned Soren Jessen-Petersen , Special Envoy for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Former Yugoslavia .
" In the run-up to elections , nationalistic political leaders are playing the ethnic / sectarian card , drumming up support within their constituencies by playing on bitter memories or fear . "