Military

DATE=11/10/00

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

NUMBER=2-269082

TITLE=BOSNIA / ELECTIONS PREVIEW (L ONLY)

BYLINE=LARRY JAMES

DATELINE=SARAJEVO

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: Voters go to the polls in Bosnia Saturday to choose a new government. VOA's Larry James has been traveling through Bosnia and has this report on the preparations for the vote.

/// ACT VOTER CAMPAIGN SONG IN FULL THEN UNDER ///

TEXT: It seems everyone in Bosnia knows this song. It's a fixture on the local music television channel and the catchy tune can be hummed by almost any young person you meet. But this song is more than pop music it is also political statement. The three young women who sing it represent the three groups that make up Bosnia-Herzegovina - Muslims, Croats and Serbs. The producers are the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the goal of the song is to encourage Bosnia's two and a half million eligible voters to choose a new government that will pursue a democratic, multi-ethnic future.

But the OSCE position is seen by many here as a not-so-subtle endorsement of the Social Democratic Party, the SDP, whose campaign slogans call for just such a future.

Robert Barry, who heads the OSCE mission in Bosnia, rejects the notion that the international community favors one party over the others.

/// BARRY ACT ///

That's nonsense. I think you're hearing that from parties who are predicting they're going to do poorly and they want a defense so they're trying to blame it on us. Which is typical of the pre-election scene here. What's happening clearly is that the nationalist parties are losing ground. You see it in the polling that's going on now. We do expect that the SDP is going to become the leading party, certainly in the Federation but that's not because we're favoring them it's because the voters are favoring them.

/// END ACT ///

Saturday's vote is the sixth the OSCE has conducted since the Dayton Peace Agreement was signed five years ago. Mr. Barry says there has been steady progress and recent elections have shown less support for the divisive politics of the nationalist Serb, Croat and Muslim parties that have dominated politics here.

Wolfgang Petritsch, the international community's high representative to Bosnia, agrees that the political atmosphere is improving.

/// PETRITSCH ACT ///

I must say I'm quite satisfied that the real agenda for this country, which is the economy, has actually penetrated the nationalistic slogans and is now on the rise. People are more and more realizing that the real issue of the country is the economy. Thorough economic reform is jobs, social security, and not so much the physical safety that is provided by the international community.

/// END ACT ///

One of the parties Mr. Petritsch describes as nationalistic, the Croatian National Party, or HDZ, has said it will hold a referendum on Croat rights during Saturday's vote. Mr. Petritsch and the OSCE, have said such a vote is illegal and should not be held.

For the parliament of the Republica Srpska, as the Serb entity is known, the nationalist Serb Democratic Party (SDS) candidates could win the most votes. The non-governmental International Crisis Group has called for the party to be banned because some of its members are suspected of war crimes and still have links with Radovan Karadzic, the wartime Bosnian-Serb leader who has been indicted as a war criminal.

Even so, Western representatives here say they see encouraging signs of change. American ambassador Thomas Miller cites Vojislav Kostunica's rise to power in Yugoslavia as well as the election of a new government in Croatia last year as important signals for Bosnia.

/// MILLER ACT ///

The fact of the matter is that this has had a tremendous psychological impact on people in this country. The message that's come through is that change is possible, number one, and number two, that people do run things, can run things if they choose to. And that's through the ballot box. And what we saw, in both the cases of Croatia and Yugoslavia, in Serbia, was the ballot box did win out after all and that people do have power if they're willing to exercise it and in both cases in a non-violent way.

/// END ACT ///

Saturday's vote actually consists of several distinct elections. Voters in the Muslim-Croat federation will decide who will sit in their 140-seat parliament, while those in the Republika Srpska will elect an 83-member assembly. Voters in both areas will elect the members of the 42 seat National Assembly.

Preliminary results are expected Monday, but it may be several weeks before the official results are announced. (Signed)

NEB/LDJ/KL/PLM